Pizza Is
by Turiya Foul
Summary: Morrick Evans, a normal, bum of a teenager, is jolted into craziness as K'ata comes to stay with him. Finished, with a sequel or two planned.
1. In the Beginning

Pizza Is...

Disclamer: I don't own anything, except Morrick.

I love summer nights. The cool heat, the sky...

The sky?

As I sat up on my pool floatie, I saw the sky. For some reason, it didn't look... right. Well, right wasn't the word. Normal... It wasn't normal. Almost directly above me, it was like the road on a hot day. That blurring, sight-bending... strangeness. It looked like an arrowhead. With wings.

I, being the slightly mad creature that I am, threw my arms wide and muttered, "Take me with you," to the strange vessel. The thing was silent, but it moved away from me, gaining altitude as it went. I didn't know whether to feel happy or insulted.

It was close to eleven. I think fell asleep in the pool after dinner. That was stupid, I know. I'm a fourteen year old boy, though, and I can do whatever I want. Yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself to get through the day. I rolled off the float and into the searingly cold water. It woke me instantly. Slicking back my hair - I need to do this, as my hair is very long for a boy - I retrieved the Mountain Dew bottles I'd been playing with. Each was half-filled with sand from different beaches. Normal people keep scrapbooks, I keep sand filled plastic bottles.

Blah, blah. Towel, shower the chlorine off, boxers, bed. Did I leave the tiki torches on? No, you put them out before dinner. Did I leave the stove on, no, no I didn't. Insomnia sucks, yes it does. Talking to oneself in one's head sucks too. Yes, it does. Shut up. Oh, look, a clown.

That ain't no clown. My blue eyes grew wide, and I stared at the thing at my window. I have floor to ceiling windows, which wasn't helping my shock at the... thing. Eight foot ceilings, this thing was having to haunch over to look at me. I couldn't see its eyes, but its mask was pointing dead at me. Its rubbery-looking dreadlocks shifted slightly, with gold bead-things clinking. Full body armor, the little flesh I could see covered in a fishnet-type mesh. It looked like my sister's fishnets... It all looked as if it'd been designed for someone bigger than this creature.

Then I noticed the weapons. A knife at the thigh, a cannon at the shoulder, more blades along the arms, oversized-looking throwing stars (I'd a few of those myself, but I didn't dream of getting at them right then), and a three foot stick-thing. Oh, yay, bop me on the head, no don't. It probably had more weapons on its person, and some of those weapons probably _were_ its person. I eyed the claws apprehensively.

It was examining the window, which was really just a big, clear door out to the deck, pool, etc. I stared at it as it traced the outlines of the door with one claw. Fear held me in its powerful grip, stilling me, widening my eyes, making my breath come in harsh gasps. Desperate, I pinched the skin at my inner elbow, praying for it to be a dream. Needless to say, this was not a dream.

I leapt nearly a foot in the air when the creature slapped both of its hands on the glass, palms to me. There were tattoos on its palms, intricate circles that reminded me of Muslim art. Or was it Hindu? I always used Art History as Nap Time… It pressed its masked face to the glass, and I knew that it was staring at me again. I wasn't about to let an armed alien monster into _my_ home. Did I have a death wish? No, I didn't.

But still, my kinder sensibilities told me it was very rude to not even acknowledge this creature. It deserved at least a maidenly shriek of fear, simply for the outfit. I, being the gentleman that I am, waved and said "'Ello," in a falsely cheery voice.

Now it jumped back about six feet. "Yes, I can talk," I said in my normal voice. "Can you? If you can't, this is going to be a very difficult, if intelligent, conversation." Ah, human vanity.

Seeing its evident shock, I made my voice soft and soothing. "It's alright. If you aren't going to kill me, of maim me, or eat me, I'm not going to do any of that to you. I'll even let you in. Yes, I'll let you in," I said, seeing it's head perk up as if it understood me. "C'mon, you can trust me and I can trust you. We're both civilized sentient beings here, I hope. C'mon," I coaxed gently. I slowly approached the door, waiting for any signs of aggressiveness from the creature to make me leap back. None came. It remained about six or seven feet away, arms at its sides, mask pointing at me.

I unlocked all three of the door's locks, bolts at the top, bottom, and side, and pulled the it open. I faced a creature that was at least a yard taller than me. Well, maybe two and a half feet, but that's still intimidating. This thing was very bulky as far as muscle went, and I didn't see any fat on it. What skin I saw was a cross between beige-ish and light orange-ish, with darker speckles in fetching patterns.

"Er, hello again," I said, feeling decidedly awkward. There was something I needed to know, so I could give the "it" a rest. "I apologize if this seems rude, and it isn't meant that way, but, please, are you male or female?" Doh. And the award for intelligence goes to…

With a guttural, growling voice, it said, "Female." She seemed rather empathetic about that. Oh, good, I'm great with ladies… not. I'm doomed, _doomed_.

A/N: This being my first, um, effort, please don't grill me too hard. Chapter two will be up soon. Only constructive criticism, please.


	2. And You Are?

Disclaimer: I own nothing but Morrick and a fuzzy bath towel. 0.O

* * *

2. And You Are?

"Madam, perhaps I should introduce myself. I'm Morrick Evans." I hate my name. It makes me feel like I'm supposed to be a girl. Morrick is, technically, the masculine version of Merrique. I think my mother picked my and my sister's names from an Anne Rice book. (My sister's name is Claudia. Go figure.) Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

"I am K'ata of Pran'rel. You are human, yes?" K'ata looked uncomfortable in armor, I noted. I also saw that the armor _was_ a bit too big for her. She shifted her weight constantly, and her fingers twitched uncertainly.

"Yes, I do indeed happen to be human. And what are you?" And then I blushed, feeling a bit foolish. Bravado is a wonderful thing, but too much of it is nauseating. "Er, never mind. That was rude of me. Something more important: why are you here?" I felt giddy. "Is Earth being invaded?"

She made a sound half between a snort and a grunt. (I was trying to remember the _Predator_ movies. Knowing the correct terms for whatever they do might be a bit of a reassurance to me.) Shaking her head, she said, "You are vain, human." She paused. "Morrick. You are vain to believe that we-- that the Elders would have any interest in this planet. Your kind has nearly destroyed it. You _will_ destroy it soon." She gave a mocking laugh.

I crowed jubilantly. "I knew it! I _knew_ it! Ha ha, I knew it knew it knew it! Oh wait." Something was odd here. "Are you an Elder, then?" I asked, uneasy.

She looked down and away and said, "No. I am not." Returning her gaze to me (I thought anyway, she was wearing a mask), she said, "It is not your concern."

"Lovely. Why are you here?" If mother dearest caught me with K'ata, I was certain we'd both be dead. Well, I'd get grounded, but she'd be dead. My mother is squeamish. I had to hurry this up.

"You would not wish to know. It is a very… cumbersome story to grasp."

"Try me." To me, I sounded reassuring.

"Very well then. Sit."

"Better yet, let's go into my room. Watch your head," I said in a tense whisper. In lieu of a proper bed, I had a trampoline. I'd covered it with all the comforters I could find. It was really rather pleasant after you got over the fact that most of the comforters were pink. K'ata followed me into my room, ducking the door and making a growly purring sound, her version of muttering, I supposed. "You sit," I directed her. I did a funky sort of leap thing to the far side of the bed.

She sat, and slid as the trampoline took her weight. She was two hundred fifty, maybe three hundred pounds, and like I said, all of it seemed to be muscle and height. I was one thirty or so, with a fair bit of muscle from weightlifting in gym - it was that or sex Ed, go figure - and five foot six. I was a sparrow next to an eagle - a _big_ eagle - compared to her.

She reached up to the side of her mask and fumbled a bit searching for the tube-things there. Finding them, she disconnected them. She pulled the mask off, revealing her face to me. I fought to stay calm as I saw that face. She was considerably different from the monsters on television. The mandibles were pretty much the same, only the teeth were _much_ sharper looking in real life. Her eyes were sand colored with lavender veining and dark purple pupils instead of black. A half healed cut marred her cheek, and tattoos of the same design as the ones on her palms bordered her hairline. I found myself thinking that she was pretty. Where had that come from?

A sigh, and she began, "Are you certain you wish to know?" At my nod, she continued, "I am K'ata of Pran'rel. That's a clan," she said, being purposefully condescending. "I am first of the Cre'merean Order, with more of that ability than anyone of my generation."

"What's the Crematorium Order?" I asked blankly.

"Cre'merean Order. It is an order of what you call -" she paused to find the word. "Telepaths. The females of our species have the telepathic ability in a greater degree and more frequently than the males. I am able to speak your language because of my ability. I am surprised that you did not ask. Are all humans as absentminded as you?"

I blushed. It hadn't even entered my mind that she was speaking English and not… whatever language she normally spoke. "No, I'm just a particularly foolish variety of human."

She nodded, satisfied. "As I was saying, not only am I greatest with the ability, but I am also the youngest with it."

"How old are you, in Earth years?" I asked, and winced because I had interrupted her again.

"I am roughly nineteen Earth years old," she said.

"So you're a prodigy," I said.

"Yes. If you have quite finished interrupting?"

"I just want to understand!" I said grumpily.

"Ask questions after I've finished then." I was silent. "I am a prodigy, as you put it. As you may know, my species is known for its violent behavior. This causes us to war frequently. You understand peace offerings, yes?" I nodded, still silent. "Well, I was one. As a young, intelligent, gifted female - you get my point here?" Another nod. My neck might start hurting if I kept on like this. "Now, there are not simply two warring clans in this. We had planned to form an alliance with this clan and destroy the other. However, the enemy was ahead of us in this. They had placed several operatives onboard our ship, how I do not know, to kill all but my guards and me. My guards were to be heavily sedated." At my snort of disbelief, she said, "Just because humans have nothing that can incapacitate us, do you believe that we are less capable than you?" I shook vehemently. "I was to be used as a weapon against both clans. The males seemed to think that they could convince me. They are foolish." I nodded agreement. All males are foolish, and no one knows why.

"So, all were killed. My guards did not like their attempt, and they fought to the death, killing all of the enemy's operatives. However, they sustained serious damage as well. All died." Cold grief held her voice. "Now, would you like being carted around like a pet?" Shake. "On a ship full of dead people?" Shake. "Right then. I took one of the smaller ships and left. I went to the nearest planet in the ship's log, which happened to be this one. I scanned -" she tapped her temple "for some form of compatible life form. I found you." She studied me for a moment. "That is it."

"So, are you hiding out on Earth?" I had digested all this with an open mind. I was sympathetic. And I didn't want to get killed. If she was a telepath, life was going to be difficult from now on.

"Yes, I am hiding on Earth. As it is forbidden to most, they should not think to look here for a considerable time." I swear on my grandmother, she sounded smug.

"Just how long is a 'considerable time' supposed to be?" I asked worriedly. So Earth _was_ going to get invaded.

"Two hundred years, give or take a decade or two."

At this point, I was willing to faint. "Let me get this straight. You plan to stay and terrorize Earth for two hundred years? You must have a very, er, _long_ lifespan? Just how long do you live?"

"I am not going to terrorize Earth. I plan to stay as hidden as is possible. Female Yautja - that's what we call ourselves - live for five hundred to seven hundred of our years. It is more on the human scale. Males live for four hundred to eight hundred years, though it can be more." She gave a little laugh. "My own father has lived for nine hundred thirty-eight years."

"Prestigious. How long are you staying with _me_?" Somehow, spending the rest of my life with K'ata didn't seem all that lovely. What would happen if I got a real girlfriend? (For the record, I have a girlfriend. We just don't admit it or act like we're supposed to.)

"Ten to fifteen of your years." At my look of horrified relief, she scowled. "Any longer and I would be forced by irritation to kill you."

"And take my skull and wear it, right?" I can be a very cheeky fellow if I put my mind to it.

"Female Yautja do not take trophies." Her mandibles clicked in either annoyance or disgust. "If I killed you, I would perhaps break your neck. It is less… messy." She laughed again. I felt nauseous.

Changing the subject, I said, "As lovely as that sounds, I have a lot of lazing about to do tomorrow. That means I need sleep." I looked over to my wall clock. It was past one already. "Er, do you sleep?"

"Yes. A lot." She did what must've been a grin.

"Okay, fine. We'll sleep now, if you don't mind. You've given me a headache." She nodded, and started to take off her armor. I was relieved to see that she wore halfway normal clothes under it. Before I turned the light off, I got my CD player and put Loreena McKennitt in on repeat. Better than Enya at making me sleep, this was.

The light off, snug in my blanket, I fell off to sleep instantly, my mind filled with dreams of highwaymen and mummers.

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A/N: A bit longer chapter now. Yay. Something is making me think that I'm going to have to explain Morrick. Problem is, I haven't written that yet. -Riya 


	3. The Morning After

Disclaimer: I own nothing… except a puppy.

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3. The Morning After

I was prodded into wakefulness and away from my Celtic dreams by an irate K'ata.

"You were… singing. It was not pleasant." Oh, and what did she know about singing, I wonder?

I glanced at the wall clock. It read 4:37 am. I sighed. "I'm sorry I woke you, K'ata. I'll try not to sing this time." Realizing that I still wore the headphones, I removed them and turned off the beautiful music.

K'ata nodded, and I resumed my prone state. I wasn't awake enough to notice when she patted the back of my head and whispered, "Good child." What was _that_ about?

* * *

"Wake up, Mr. Lump! It's a B-E-A-U-tiful morning at 11:05," boomed my elder sister's voice from my doorway. Her sarcasm was lost on me. It was too… too… toooo early… It was time for her to go to her job at her beloved coffee house; whatever possessed her to wake me up at this ungodly hour, I don't know, and I don't _want_ to know.

Rising with a stiff groan, I boomed back to her, "I LIVE!" in my best imitation of every vampire and werewolf and patchwork body movie that I'd ever seen. Which boiled down to about all of them, but I'm not bragging. My glorious performance, however, was as lost on her as her sarcasm was on me. Ah, pity. She strutted away, nonchalant and mechanical as ever. "Ugh, old people," I grunted after her.

"Ugh, loser brothers," came the reply. I was tempted to flip her off through the wall.

I shut - note, I didn't _slam _the thing like she does in her fits of hormonal rage - the door and prepared to return to my slumber, when a metallic gleam caught my eye. With a gulp, I beheld a large pile of armor.

"Oh, crap," I said to myself. Searching about me frantically, I half moaned, half murmured, "K'ata? Where are you?"

"Here, silly Morrick," came the amused whisper of my new roommate (hmm, I could think of it that way calmly) who was evidently behind me. I whirled and found a large blur loomed over me. The blur moved and sat down on my bed, and then became K'ata. She'd been using the invisibility jigger. Without the rest of the armor.

"I know I sleep late, but you, you are truly lazy," she said mockingly. Was that _affection_ I heard in her voice?

I favored her with my trademark lopsided grin. "My lady, I have turned being lazy into a fine art," and with that, I attempted to return to my wonderful, soft, still _warm_ bed. K'ata, however, would have none of it.

"No more sleep for you. You must explain to me - in detail - how you are blocking my ability. It is very confusing, and I dislike such confusion." She made the rapid clicking noise, and followed it with a new, chittery sound. Irritation, I guess.

"You expect me to be able to explain how me mind works this early in the morning?" I asked her, feeling scandalized.

"Yes."

"Lovely." Hearing my stomach say "Feed mahy" in a scary Barry White voice, I asked her, "Look, can we put this off until we've had the all important Lurnchfast?"

"What is 'Lurnchfast'?" she asked, for all the world sounding glum. She looked so doleful that I laughed. Big mistake. I was awarded with a cuff on the head and an I-am-not-here-for-your-entertainment look.

"Sorry, but it was funny."

All that got was a morose grunt.

"Okay. Cloudy should be gone by now. We, bold and beautiful knights that we are, shall ride forth-- er, we'll raid the kitchen. Mwahahaha…" It's sad, really, that my evil laughs are not very convincing. "But first," I said, looking around me, "I think I'll be clothed today." In a unbuttoned button down dragon shirt with flare-y blue jeans, to be overwhelmingly precise. That done, I left my room, and then peeked back into it, and told Her Alien Majesty to hurry Her Royal Butt up. And again, I got slapped upside the head.

A thought hit me along with her hand. "How did you find out that my mind was blocked to you?" I asked uncomfortably.

She took a moment to answer. "I was searching for who that lewd female is. I was in your mind, and you shut me out." With a menacing growl, she asked, "What is _that_?"

She was referring to one of my mother's miniature poodles. We had three of them that the mother woman and Claudia took care of, and I had my own huge husky-and-wolf mix out in the yard. I was left to the task of explaining to her what a poodle is without the aid of telepathy. When we reached the kitchen - it's in the basement, go Mom - I was explaining that we shared about a third of our DNA with daffodils.

"DNA?" she asked doubtfully. "You humans seem to have too many ways to justify your existence."

"Dioxin ribonucleic acid, or some such," I said very quickly, feeling proud of myself for remembering anything from my classes. "Located in the--"

"I honestly don't care," she said flatly.

"And I honestly liked it better when you could pick whatever you wanted out of my head without having to ask me and make me guess what you want," I retorted, feeling a bit light-headed from lack of oxygen.

"We must fix that," she agreed.

* * *

I made toast. We found out that K'ata does not like human food. Even if it has marmalade. I don't know, maybe it was just the toast? But no, I made bacon and tried to get her to take that, but she still turned it down. My cooking can't be that nauseous-making, can it?

"It can," she informed me sullenly.

"Alright." I was nothing if not agreeable. "What do you normally eat?"

"Whatever it is, I wouldn't trust you to cook it," came the laughing reply. "It certainly isn't on this planet, either." Taking pity on me (I hoped) she said, "I do not need to feed often, as you do, and my ship is stocked with anything I could possibly need."

"Yeah, but two, no, more than that, hundreds of years?"

"It is a big ship. Your effort, though, is kind." Was I mad, or were her eyes sparkling - glowing, actual light - from the shadows of the kitchen?

After I cleaned up the main messes - mine, not Cloudy's or Mom's - I sat back in one of the swiveling barstools and tried to think of something intelligent to say. When nothing came to mind, I asked, "So, how do we fix my mind?"

I'd startled her. Deep, deep thoughts were all she thought, apparently. She was in the blue recliner. Yes, that one, the one with the doily. I'll never admit it to any real people - pillows are most of what I talk to - that I made the doily. What's a teenage boy doing making doilies? Hmm…

"I do not know of how we can fix your mind. Perhaps you are naturally resistant to my ability?"

"I don't know! We don't _have_ telepaths here," I told her bluntly.

"Yes, you do. You have the passive form. Mildly, but it is still there. There are a few with just the active form. Most are passive, but some have both. I avoided these," she added.

"Wait wait. What do you mean, passive form?" This was going to be a headache day, I could tell.

"A natural receiver." Blank look from me. She sighed, clicking a bit. "One with the active form is capable of placing anything from a thought to all the information they possess into the mind of another. Likewise, they can take this information from another. They have to make themselves do this. One with the passive form does this naturally. It is a reflex for them. They, unlike the active forms, have developed a blocking mechanism. You understand this?" she asked, the hope plain in her voice.

"Eh, barely. So, I can pick up on the thoughts swirling around me, and I can cut myself off from them too?" Ibuprofen, please.

"Yes." I could hear the little high score thing going off in her head.

"Okay. So, how do we fix me?" Explaining stuff is too much like work. In fact, talking is too much like work. My elbow on the counter, I rested my head in my hand. Inspiration took hold. I tried something that I'd read once in one of Cloudy's fantasy books. Visualizing a door, a big, ornate oak door, I saw that it was locked. One by one, I unlocked all the locks, and I opened the door. I pictured K'ata there, and I invited her in.

"I do not know what you did, but you work again," she said in real life, breaking the image. "Oh, daffodils. Interesting."

"Now, I just need the _why_ of it." She gave me a funny look, and I said, "Well, I know _how_ it works, and _how_ to fix it, but I don't know _why_ it works, or _why_ it broke in the first place. The first _why_ I shouldn't even hope for, but the second one…" And maybe the _why_ of why I'm actually going along with all this.

"You should practice." Now it was time for me to return the funny look. "I know children with less ability than you who are more advanced than you. It is pathetic." Great. I get one with a vain streak.

"I can't help it that I'm slow. Most humans don't even believe that telepathy exists. _I _didn't. Say, why'd you avoid the ones with the passive and the active?" Subject change. Nice…

"If you want the knowledge, you must find it yourself." I know everyone says that no creature is evil, that there're only different degrees of badness, but this scholar Everyone is so frequently wrong that I don't really trust him. Especially on this. Evil…

"Cheeky, are you? Well then…" I thought. And thought. And thought some more. I came to the conclusion that, "I'll try later when I've considered several methods of… extraction. C'mon, there's someone I want you to meet."

She balked. "I must stay as unknown as possible. You _know_ this." She seemed to double check. I tried to feel her in my mind, but there was nothing. "Yes, you do know. And yet you wish to make my presence known to another. Curious."

"Yes, all is strange in the land of the beer can hats," I said, hoping to make her give me the funny look. Sadly, it didn't work.

"You are too young to do such things." Drat. This really _was_ going to cramp my social life. No beer? No drugs? No jungle boogey? I'm doomed. "Have a party when I leave, if you want to be foolish."

"Following my natural instincts is--? Never mind. Liz probably thinks I'm dead by now. She might even come over and see you," I said casually.

She tapped something on her computer-thingy and became invisible. Well, not completely invisible. There was just a large blur in the chair; real unnoticeable, that. (This is sarcasm.) Returning to her visible state, she asked, "Who is Liz?" Ah, Elizabeth Warner, the love of my life. The only human being who could and would beat me at backyard wrestling. Long blond hair, gray eyes, same height as me, same build as me, same tastes as me… Soul mates. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I said nothing. K'ata went over everything I thought, saving me the trouble of fumbling around the word _love_. "C'mon then. I have to talk to Liz."

And we went. We have a long driveway; a creek runs beside it. When it rains, the road floods a bit, and if you're really careful, you can fool some idiot into thinking you can walk on water. Or that they can do it too. Liz lives across the bigger road from me. If you follow the creek - which Liz and I named the Brandywine last summer - it goes straight to her house. If you follow the road, there's more walking. Needless to say, the creek has a well-beaten path.

I took the time to point out to K'ata the native wildlife. That stuffed Easter bunny, hanging from a noose; the stuffed sheep, buried up to its neck in leaves and such; a monkey, with its head nearly off. These were from Liz and my's evil years. K'ata said nothing. She probably thinks I'm crazy, but then again, I am.

Liz's house is a two-story L-shaped monster, with Roman columns galore. There was a deck on the roof, and a tennis/volleyball court to the right, and the L of the house concealed a pool. In one of the rocking chairs on the front porch, you could always find one of her elderly aunts, rocking and knitting and mumbling to herself, or fidgeting with her blue hair, or just napping. Liz's mother's family is from Louisiana, and when Mumsie married, they came with her. I envy Liz sometimes; she has a whole bizarre circus for a family, and I have a ridiculously normal one.

I decided to be a proper gentleman and use the door (and not the ivy trellis to the window this time!). I said good afternoon to the aunt on duty - one of the knitters - but she didn't reply. She was staring fixedly at a spot in space. With growing horror, I realized she was looking at K'ata. She snapped out of it, and said to me, "Lovely weather we're having, yes darling?"

All of them called me darling. It was not pleasant at first to have everyone call you that, but I'd gotten used to it. "Oh, yes dear, quite lovely indeed," I replied with the grace of long practice. Sometimes I just sit at the bottom of the pool and think about how screwy my life is.

My love answered the door in a fluffy green frog motif bath robe and puppy slippers. "Eh?" she asked me grumpily. "Oi, why're you up s'early?" Yawning, she invited me - us - in. "Had food yet?" she asked. I declined politely. I knew quite well that she was a caveman in the morning. Morning being whenever she happened to wake up.

She downed a large glass of orange juice, and chased that with her vitamins and coffee. Her mother figured now that she was fifteen - only a few weeks ago; I'd catch up a few days before school restarted - she could do what she pleased. Munching a Pop-tart, she sat on the counter and glared at a plant. Yes, I do wonder about her sanity at times. When she finished the pastry, she looked at me and said, "You're very, er, disheveled. May I ask why?"

Amazing what coffee can do, isn't it? With considerable gusto, I said to her, " My darling dear, there is an alien in your divine midst."

"You've found the weed, haven't you?" she said, eyes wide and unblinking. "And the archaic… Ugh, no telling what you've done to the sheep."

I blushed. It's a long story, and I ain't tellin' it. "'Ere, uncloak, will you? She's being skeptical."

As K'ata uncloaked, I said to my lady love, "Liz Warner, meet K'ata of Pran'rel. K'ata, meet Liz."

And as all of the kitchen appliances looked on, I smiled. Liz's scream of terror meant nothing. We'd all get on swimmingly. I could tell.

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A/N: I think as I go along each chapter will be bigger word wise than the last. Woo hoo…

olafur: Thank you for reviewing. Morrick is fourteen, but he's been… exposed to some other things, such as demons, dragons, and the other stuff I wrote when I was his age. I might find a way to get him therapy, but where's the fun in that? His mum practically lives in the hospital (she's an on-call doctor) and I don't think she'd even notice K'ata. They live _in_ the woods - like me - and that's where she stashed the ship, but why stay in the ship when what you want is company? Yes, I _could_ have written it better, but that might mess up the stream of consciousness-y feeling of it, which is why I like it. Bah, weirdness.

gallivants off with penguins


	4. Of Aunts, Hats, and Tea Time

Disclaimer: I own it all! Mwahahaha… not. See it, see the not? Haha, you can't sue me, nyanya…

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4. Of Aunts, Hats, and Tea Time

"Liz, darling, please calm down. There is no need to hyperventilate." My words were having no effect. My darling dear was going to go into shock, just because a giant alien was in her kitchen. Well, that was something to be a little disturbed about, but there's no need to be so… overwrought about it. I mean, sure, I wouldn't just calmly keep sipping my evening cocoa if Lord Sauron walked in, but I certainly wouldn't bloody well hyperventilate over it.

"I do not think she likes me," K'ata said glumly.

"Congratulations, you've just won the award for Most Obvious Comment of the Year." (This is irony. I've been sarcastic enough. Pink and blue thoughts…) Liz was suffocating herself. As it seemed to be working, I didn't try to stop her. After a few moments, though she was a bit blue-looking, her breath returned to normal.

"Morrick."

"Yes, Liz?"

"Why is a video game character in my kitchen?"

"Well, um, that's a funny story, one which I'll be glad to tell you later, but, er, suffice it to say that, in not so many words--"

"If you don't tell me, now, I will be forced to maul you."

"Yes, well, ah… She isn't a video game character. She's… The head of the Crematorium-- No, that isn't right. What is it," I asked K'ata.

"The Cre'merean Order." Oh my, did I hear scorn at that? Why yes, dear Morrick, I think you did.

"Yeah, that. They're telepaths, and she's the strongest of them. You don't believe a word I'm saying, do you?" I asked when she turned away from me.

"Oh, no, I believe you. I'm just off to get some medication." Liz seemed to be edging closer to hysteria every moment. I, however, don't trust anyone who goes to therapy more than twice a month, and Liz goes twice a week.

"And just what medication are you talking about?" I demanded of her, and I received a _look_ for my crassness.

"If you must know, Xanax, children's formula." She glanced at K'ata. "On second thought, I think it'll be the adult version." She hopped off the counter where she'd been sitting and stumbled off to her bathroom, with me in tow. K'ata, I presumed, was following me.

Once again, I was shocked by the number of bottles in Liz's medicine cabinet. I swear, the shrinks must've put her on every pill in the book, and they have to develop a new pill every month just so they can change her prescription and mess her up. Heaven help us if she gets suicidal, because one bottle of any of these, and poof… I've often told her that she should become a drug dealer, but she says she'd rather be my pimp. Hey, wait a minute! _Now_ I get it. Cheeky strumpet…

"Here, see, one pill, Xanax, like I said." She swallowed the pill and grimaced. "It's a pity that sugar ruins it…"

"You are not a werewolf, now, c'mon. We must make peace with our dear Yautja." I tried to say it like K'ata had said it, but I think I messed it up.

"So they do call themselves that. Hmm…" Liz had lost her tense look, and now sported an eyes-half-lidded, oh, lovely look. It was the same look I got when I listened to the Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "Sweetling, I'm sorry, I need to get dressed." Off my darling went to her room, to berobe herself splendidly-- What the hell are you wearing?

Oh, yes, wonderful sense of humor you have, to wear the AVP t-shirt.

"Now that I am medicated and clothed, go away." At my gasp of shock at _her_ crassness, she said, "She can speak for herself, and you're a terrible storyteller with all your fumbling airs." Hmph. Yes, dear, and you're a regular Tolkien, with _your_ fumbling airs, as you call them. "Fumbling airs" indeed.

Fine. "Where shall I dispose of my worthless carcass, Your Majesty?" I asked with a bow. "Shall I stuff myself into a broom cupboard? Or perhaps an under-sink cabinet would be more appropriate."

"Go stuff your head in the garbage disposal." Thinking twice, she said, "Then again, knowing you and your limited intelligence, you'd actually do it. Go to the library, amuse yourself there. Go on, shoo." And so I was banished from the ladies' talk. Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah.

Following my lady's orders, I went to the library. Searching diligently, I at last found my prize: _The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood._ It was a bit tattered (I'd read it many times, with and without Liz, in my search to "understand" females) and very dog-eared, but it was still one of my favorite things to read. The bookmark was at the bit about Princess Naked-as-a-Jaybird, and I read. And read. And read. I had begun to wonder if anyone had killed anyone when Liz burst through the door practically screaming my name.

"Eh, darling?" I asked her warily. She grabbed _The Sisterhood_ away from me and started hitting me with it. And let me tell you now, she does not hit like a girl. She took the same weightlifting class as I did, and it worked better for her than it did for me.

"You-- blasted-- idiot! I-- should-- kill-- you-- for-- getting-- me-- into-- this!" she screamed at me.

"Just once - ow - I'd like to know - hey - why I'm being - stop it - beaten. Just once! Now, preferably." She herded me over to a chair - I'd been on the floor - and sat me down in it.

"You want to know why I'm hitting you? Because, _darling dear,_ you _deserve_ it!" she screamed in my face. "You've gotten us into this mess, and now, we've no way to get out of it. Don't you read fan fiction?"

"No," I said shakily.

"Well, I do. And I know that most fan fiction is true. She," Liz said, gesturing to the door, where K'ata now stood, "is going to kill us when she leaves."

"I have told you, human, I will not kill you," K'ata said, irritated by Liz's screaming. "There is no need to kill you. If you tell anyone, without me as proof, who will believe you?"

"Y'know, Liz, she has a pretty good point," I said, risking her wrath and fury.

"Shut up. You've sentenced us both to death, so you have no right to an opinion! Silence!" she said as I tried to speak again. "You," she said to K'ata, "I will never trust."

"Then you are foolish, human. Young, and foolish." K'ata's voice had taken on a haughtiness that I'd never heard from her before.

"I may be foolish, but at least I am not a dishonorable liar!" Liz _shrieked_ at K'ata. K'ata, not taking this well at all, picked Liz up by the throat and shook her a bit.

My girlfriend is going to die, I thought sadly. However, K'ata dropped Liz, apparently taking _my_ feelings into consideration. (Hallelujah! The love of my life will live!)

Liz was unconscious, though. "Maybe you can convince her through fear," I said numbly.

"Maybe," she said doubtfully. "I think your roles have been reversed."

"Eh?"

"You are more, um…"

I sighed. Here we go again. "Feminine?" I asked solemnly.

She laughed and said, "Well, yes. And she is more of a…"

I winced and said, "Masculine."

"Yes, that type. Is it thus with all humans?" I wonder what you think is so bloody amusing.

"No," I said shortly. "We're just weird."

"Ah."

"Ok. I'm going to go hide now. Please don't kill her." I retrieved my book and went off to the Secret Place. It's really just a closet, but Liz and I, well, we "tricked it out" so it would look like a hippie paradise. I took my fez off of one of the shelves and put it on. The tassels were very sparkly. Reclining in one of the beanbag chairs, I returned to my story.

Not long after I resumed my reading, there was a knock at the door. One of the elderly little Aunts peeked in at me. "Tea-time, Morrick," she said brightly.

"How do you find me! I'm very well hidden indeed!" I exclaimed, shocked to the point that my fez fell off.

"There's a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door. It's a dead giveaway. Oh, I shouldn't've said the 'd' word," she said worriedly.

"What, death?" I asked.

"Eek, don't say that word! Just come to tea-time." I had begun to recognize this Aunt as Makes-Good-Cookies. (When I was nine, Liz and I gave them all Old-Lady-Indian-Names. Ah, to be nine again…)

Off to tea time, bantering with Auntie all the way. Most of the retired Aunts were in attendance. It looked like a Red Hat Society meeting minus the hats. They cajoled me into nearly forgetting about Liz and K'ata, and once again told me they were all waiting for us to announce the engagement. No pressure, eh?

I was only saved by Uncle Byron, the prettiest man I've ever seen. Very effeminate, shall we say, and deserving of the Nobel Peace prize for all he puts up with. (He owns the local Medieval Fair thing. The odd thing is, he doesn't limit himself to just that age. There are like six parks, and two are open at a time, with the other four being changed to different ages. It's a big family thing. I go whenever it's open, with Liz, so that takes care of at lease one date every two weeks on Saturday.) Byron had a new sword to show me. Silvery metal, with gold gems - glass, because they seemed to hold up better in an actual fight - it fitted me perfectly. I said that that was odd, because most of the knights are big fellows; this would be a toothpick to them. Then he told me that it was for me. I stared at him, and then thanked him profusely. I was to wear it to the next fair, and in the left park.

I was agreeing to when Liz tromped into the room. Before she could speak, Byron put a matching lady's sword in her hand. Matching swords. Oh, dear gods… Very subtle, he is. (Okay, fine, more sarcasm.) Byron chuckled evilly, and left us.

"Before you say anything, or draw any unfounded conclusions, let me say that K'ata and I have worked things out." Liz stopped to breathe.

"Great!" I was understandably cheered. "So, it's all good?"

"Not quite. We've decided to vote you off the island."

My turn to scream. It was rather like Stephen King's _The Boogeyman_, this was. Right at the end, where the guy realizes that it's all just a ruse.

"Hey, hey, hey, chill, mon," Liz said with her Jamaican accent. It wasn't all that calming. She's like the girlfriend in the beginning of _Jeepers Creepers_ when the guy's in the tunnel, nagging nagging nagging. Was that helpful to him, no. "Hey, I was joking."

"If I have a heart attack, I hope they cut you out of my will," I said feeling harassed.

"Y'know, I'm not sure that they'd even read your will." She was looking thoughtful.

"Eh, why not?" What was wrong with my will?

"Well, it's written on green frog stationary in pink gel pen. Very, um, professional. Yeah, that's sarcasm." She was trying to hide her laughter.

"'Mock me if ye will, and yet I surely triumph,'" I quoted.

"Rule number four of _The Guide to Surviving the Movies_, don't read from the human skin-covered book," Liz said severely.

"I was reading from memory," I said sourly. "Say, where's Schnucky?"

"Eh?"

"Our new friend."

"K'ata? In my room, watching the tele. Why?" she asked suspiciously.

Crap. "What's she watching?" I asked, feeling sick.

"Um… _Predator_. Why?"

"She's gonna kill me."

"Look, this is the third time I've asked you. Why? And if you don't answer me, I swear, I'll body slam you."

I paled visibly. "Is it really wise to expose her to _that_? I mean, it might bias her view of human beings. And one of the other things, I think your aunts can see through her cloaking device."

"Crap." My lady love is eloquent, no? Yeah, right. "Well, we have to guard her, don't we?"

Um… "Well, we are outfitted for it," I said. "Let's just go and hang for a while." She nodded her agreement.

When we reached Liz's suite, we found a great and terrible sight. K'ata, upside down on the couch, was laughing at the follies of the two males in the movie. Seeing us, she said, "They're idiots, aren't they?"

We agreed. I don't think I've ever been fond of the Govenator, and surely, Whatsit was of the same ilk. We joined her on the couch, upside down with our legs over the back.

"This is pleasant," Liz said.

"Hey, why don't we ever do this?" I asked suddenly. "We've never done this."

"That is because humans are limited in their intelligence," K'ata said cheerfully. "It really takes a rocket scientist to sit backwards on a couch. And this male looks better upside down."

"Oh, god, she's discovered sarcasm. What shall we do, lovely?" I asked woefully. "Most certainly, she will rule us all!"

"It'd be a change for the better, don't you think?" K'ata had apparently discovered egotism along with sarcasm. Liz was giggling, though, and if she found it funny, it couldn't be too serious. (Either that, or she'd taken more pills…)

* * *

K'ata and I left Liz's house a little before six. We walked back, enjoying the warm evening and the chirping of the crickets, the smells of hay, forest, and sweet grass. At least, I enjoyed them. Quite frankly, I haven't the faintest idea of what she likes. I'll ask her later; pillow talk and all that. The heat of the day was balmy on my face now, letting me believe that _now_ was a frozen moment of absolute utopia, a perfect time that would never slip away, never change, never be defiled or ravished by time. But it was changing, and the sun was sliding below the horizon when we reached my house. Neither my mother nor Cloudy were home, and my father certainly wasn't going to travel two thousand miles to be home for dinner when he could stay and look at Plutonian microbes by the light of the moon in a mountain. (He, like my mother, is a doctor, but instead of looking at people, he looks at stuff the space probes bring back and does all sorts of stuff with it. Everything's classified, of course, but that doesn't stop him from telling us stories in the privacy of his own home. When he's home, that is. It's been nearly a year since I've seen him in real life.) The futility of my father's work struck me like a falling piano. That he searched such miniscule things for life, and here I was, walking beside the living proof of his work, seemed blasphemous to me. I felt my eyes misting; I almost always cry when I think of him. Home, home to bury my face in the mother-lady's sweater, or something close, and cry until I felt better. Most people think that boys shouldn't cry, and they're callous idiots.

I turned on the television and showed K'ata the particulars of our remote, and said I'd be with her in an hour or two. Then I went to my mother's room and found an old scarf with her smell on it and another cologne-type scent as well. Shame, shame that I didn't remember what my father smelled like. This would do, though.

I settled into an empty nook in my closet, and held the scarf close as I cried. Finished, I almost felt happy, in a miserable sort of way.

When I emerged from the closet, I found K'ata watching me, her head cocked to the side, a soft rumble coming from deep in her chest.

"I dare you to say anything," I said as I considered what a sight I must look, with my eyes puffy and my face tearstained and flushed. How anyone can cry and stay beautiful, I'll never know.

"I wasn't going to say anything," she said neutrally. "I wanted to ask you if you'd come and fix the television."

"What did you do to the television?" I asked incredulously. She couldn't've broken the thing yet. I'd only been gone for about an hour. We went to check it, and it was just locked. I am a very bad child, in that I know the password and I haven't told either Cloudy of Mother. I considered what K'ata had it on - _Southpark - _and asked her, "I don't think that's a good thing for you to be watching. It's rude and vulgar and disgusting."

She prodded me insistently with the remote, and I complied with a sigh. Leave her to her juvenile programming, and get dinner, I thought. Halfway to the kitchen, I heard the channel change to _Mad TV_. Happy with my charge's choice of brain rotting tele, I killed a few leftovers.

* * *

A/N: This happens to be the result of a very busy day, composed first on notebook paper whilst being driven on a mad shopping spree - ugh, shopping, blah - and then typed and edited while listening to Tony Bennett, with a lawn gnome looking on. And my computer chair is missing, so I have to use this identical _other_ chair from across the way here. With t-shirts being thrown at me, for gods' sakes.

olafur: I'm a she. And I'm not motivated by reviews; I'm motivated by being able to live vicariously through my writing, and by extra-sweet tea and cookies. But, er, reviewing _is_ rather nice. (So long as I'm not getting flamed, a'course. Heh…) .

zappy: His name is Lawrence, named so because Morrick feels like sharing his middle name with others. Thanks for the reviews. : )


	5. The Zipper Goes in the Back, part 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Everything in this story owns me.

* * *

5. The Zipper Goes on the Back

"Remind me again why I'm here," I, Morrick, asked the large alien I was following. With a duffel bag full of cleaning supplies - not trusting her to have the proper things, and preferring my familiar bottles to whatever she had - I trudged loyally behind K'ata.

"Since you seem apt at such things as cleaning, you are going to help me clean my ship," she said. Was it just me, or had she gotten more… evil, in the week she'd been here, on Earth? Maybe I was rubbing off on her. Hey, it could happen.

"Okay. And is your ship in _Mexico_, or are we close yet?" I asked in my growly voice. Really, we'd been walking for like an _hour_. My feet were tired. My entire _me_ was tired I'd been telling her this about every two minutes since my watch had announced the fact that we'd been walking for a whole, fregmekking _hour_. I was glad that all the land in the area was owned by either my family, Liz's family, or Tim or Sam's families.

"It is close," was all she'd reply. Yeah, well, it was close an hour ago. Some brave soul needs to revise your meaning of the word _close_. I considered doing it, but she seemed overly fond of smacking me on the head when I tried to correct her… weirdnesses.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"Are we there yet, Daddy?"

"Shall I take that as an insult?" she asked, cracking her knuckles ominously.

"Please do. I absolutely love being pummeled." In the words of the magnificent Bartimaeus, this is sarcasm. "So, are we there yet?"

"Morrick."

"Yers?"

"Make the pig sound."

"You've been--" I began, and then realized that something was screwy. "That wasn't what I thought you'd say," I said poutily.

"No, and that was not how I'd expected you to reply, either," she said, making the _confused_ clicking sound.

"Some idiot switched the scripts!" I said extravagantly. (You may not have realized this yet, but we're all being controlled by some freaky chick with too much time and a lawn gnome audience. Oh, wait, you aren't supposed to know this. Oops.) "Um, what's yours say for the title?"

"_Chapter Six:_ _The Introduction of Sam, Tim, and Alvin,_" she said without gusto. "Yours?"

"_Chapter Five: The Zipper Goes in the Back,_" I said, wondering who really makes up these stupid titles. "Hey, anonymous camera guy!"

The dude with the camera said, "Yeah?"

"Which chapter are we on?"

"Uh, five? Yeah, it's five."

I waited for him to take the initiative. He didn't. "Uh, guy? Chapter five script, if you please. Haven't you been paying attention?" He _was_ watching us, for gods' sakes.

"Oh." He tossed me the script. "Child actors, Jeesh."

"Loser camera guys with no attention spans, Jeesh," I fired back, at risk for getting my head cut off in most of the shots. "Don't give him back the other one," I told K'ata and gave her the other script. "We might actually get to edit it now, if we have enough advance time." I gave her a conspiratory wink.

She thumbed through the _Five_ script, and asked, "Okay, where were we?"

"Um… After I said 'yers', the scripts messed up."

"Okay." She gave the rest of the thing a quick read through, and said, "Do the world a favor and shut up."

"You've been talking to Liz, haven't you?"

"Yers," she said back at me, saying it much better than I do. Well, she has dreadlocks, what else would you expect? "Hey, guess what?" she asked cheerfully.

"What?" I asked, feeling annoyed. One minute she's angsty, the next she's cartoon cheery. Maybe she's bipolar. Liz has the medication for that, and if we got her to take some… Crap, she can hear what I think.

"And that is not a blessing. We are there now." The gestured to a really huge blur.

All along the way, I'd been fantasizing about what the ship would be like. Everything from the yellow _Hitchhiker_ Vogon ships to the sleek, opalescent Wraith darts had crossed my mind. I was wrong in every way. It was, in fact, a really huge Lantean puddle-jumper with Klingon influences that looked like there was more of it embedded in the earth. It had a really funky paint job too: green, with blue shimmery undertones.

Something was screwy here. Namely, the fact that this ship was the wrong shape. The one from the first night was arrowhead-shaped. This wasn't. "What happened to the other ship?" I asked.

"It is docked within. Come," she said with the false imperiousness that I'd taught her. "We are wasting time."

"Says the alien with the seven hundred year or so life span," I retorted, grinning.

"With you around, it may be just two," she fired back. I was glad that she got the whole witty banter thing, but _I'm_ supposed to have the last word. Bloody writers…

We entered the ship, and the first thing I noticed was a new smell, a sort of pineapple-y smell. I sniffed about obviously. "Narcium," K'ata said when she noticed me. "Humans do not know it. _We_ only learned of it a few of our generations ago."

"The dawn of human civilization," I interjected helpfully.

"Be that as it may," she said, "I would be careful, were I you. Honestly, going about, sniffing every foreign smell you find. I might be using airborne poisons, and you'd never even suspect until your skin started to bubble."

I laughed, and then asked solemnly, "You really have stuff that can do that?"

She laughed at me, and nodded. "We have stuff much worse than that. That's mild compared to some of the biological weapons we have."

"I thought you guys liked face to face combat, and all that, like in the movies," I said as we walked. I think we were in the walls, heading down.

"The _guys_ do. We, however, prefer to decimate our enemies quickly, if not cleanly." It occurred to me that I was possibly dealing with a sadist. Before I could ask her, she said, "We do not consider Earth advanced enough to be an enemy, an ally, or neutral. Your planet is like a child that cannot make its own decisions."

"Gee, thanks. I feel so loved," I said, the sarcasm dripping off me. "You've given me something new to nightmare about." Okay, sweet-thang, change the subject. "When are we gonna start cleaning?"

"Oh, that. Morrick, I lied to you. We're not here to clean." She avoided my open-mouthed stare remarkably well, but she lost to me in the end. "Please close your mouth. I assure you, I mean you no harm by this."

Backing away from her, (and not into a wall or chair this time, I might add) I said, "Yeah, sure, they all say that, and then they kill you." Liz's stories, her fan fictions that supposedly ended up being true, swarmed into my mind, filling me with dread.

"Morrick," she said logically, "I just want to run a few tests on you. They won't hurt you. I was afraid that if I told you, you'd refuse."

"Damn straight, I'd refuse! So, you lie to me instead? That isn't how you keep friends, and I wanted you to be a friend, instead of the freaky alien chick that lives with me." Oh, gods, I was babbling, and close to sobbing. Tears wouldn't help this, though; I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted blood a moment later.

"Morrick, why don't you want me to test you?"

"You--!" I didn't know why. Why didn't I want to be tested? "Er… I'm not sure. It was just like a… a reflex!" This was confusing.

"A conditioned response," she said. "And no doubt you have no idea who conditioned you, do you?"

"Do you mean conditioned like brainwashed?" I asked. "If you do, then I think I know who did it. My friend Tse, she's into hypnotism and stuff like that, and she--"

"No human agency is capable of true conditioning," she said severely. "Brainwashing can be seen through. Conditioning is a complete changing of the conscious and subconscious minds."

"Oh. Crap."

"With the tests I had intended to administer upon you, I would have known at least who did it and how severe it is," she continued softly.

"'Ere, whatcha mean, 'intended'? You can still do 'em, right?" I asked comically. Maybe it was the patheticness of my attempt to cheer her, or maybe it really worked, but either way, she seemed happier. With an embarrassed shock, I noticed that I was still on the wall; even worse, it (the wall) was curved, and it was a bit difficult to get out of. With effort, I was able to, and I linked my arm with K'ata's, even if it did make me feel, more than ever, like an exceptionally _puny_ human.

And so, she led me off to what might be called a lab. Only, a very high-tech looking lab. She put me (literally, she lifted me off the floor like a doll) on a recliner-looking chair thing, and to my shock and horror, strapped me into it. Her excuse: "One, I am evil, as you put it, and two, some species have been known to have adverse reactions, such as convulsions, fainting, and mild temporary insanity, to our scanning systems. You might fall off, and we'd have to start all over." Gods, why did I feel like a frog on dissection day?

She drew my blood, and she was obviously good at this, because I didn't even feel the needle as it entered my neck. Why am I not freaked out by the fact that I'm being stabbed in the neck with a big needle by an alien? I couldn't-- No, I didn't _want_ to move. I don't think I could have convinced myself to move at all. This is scary, I tried to say, and I couldn't _speak_ either. I'm going to kill her if I ever get out of this.

As if through fog, I heard K'ata. "You are not capable of killing me. And do not lay blame upon me for this. I have done nothing which might paralyze you."

_Ah, yes, the wonder that is telepathy. _I started to think unpleasant things at her, such as scenes from _Spongebob_ and a very scary idea of what she'd look like dressed in Bjork's swan dress. I think she might have smacked me, but I'm not sure.

I stopped being an idiot and tried to figure out why I was stuck. _Needle, scanning chair, the air… The Narcium! _Yes, I am a genius.

"Mmph," K'ata said. "So that must be why the others say we have an intolerable air of coolness."

You make bad puns, I thought at her. _And you're intolerable, alright. How do we fix this, then?_

"Eh, I'm not sure. But, while you're being still, I'm going to run the scan and test your blood for mutagens. You never know, you know?"

_No, I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to know. _Realizing that I was about to be scanned with something that caused mild temporary insanity, I thought at her, _Hey, don't run--

* * *

_

When I woke up, I was outside, lolling over on a tree. It was quite pleasant for a very brief moment, and then I remembered my alien roommate.

"Where are you, you evil, conniving, scheming,--" I ran out of words. Getting no response from my adjectives, I said, "K'ata? Roomy?" Again, no response. "Halloo?"

I heard a rather undignified _thump_ somewhere over to my right. "You ruined a perfectly good nap, boy-o," K'ata said as she dusted herself off. Not very catlike, that fall.

"You-- Oh. Sorry."

"What?" she asked as I meandered off into muttering incomprehensively.

"Sorry, I seem to be remembering everything in fragments. Swirly fragments," I added when I started feeling dizzy. I was very glad that I'd remained sitting, otherwise I'd've fallen flat on my face.

"Do I need to give you another needle to make you sleep some more?" she asked calmly.

I was glad that my reflexory emotions were reacting properly now. With a horrified expression on my face, I told her, "No. Needles. And definitely not whatever you put in them the last time." She laughed. "'T isn't funny. You're not the one coming off a bad trip. I saw albino ferrets, and they were doing bad things…" Another bit of my memory swirled by, and I asked her, "So, who brainwashed me?"

"The Ancients. I'd thought they were extinct, all dead and gone, but nooo, can't give poor K'ata a break, can they?" she said with distaste. At my questioning look, she said, "They're old, older than the Yautja, older than the Gou'ald, definitely older than humans. They were supposedly killed off by the Wraith, but with this… They're the original founders of the human race."

"And these people are _who_ to me?" I asked sullenly.

"It doesn't matter now. The deed has been done, no helping it. The only thing we can do is find out what it is they conditioned you for." She fell off into musing.

"Uh huh. Well, as lovely as that sounds, I'm going home," I said. My hands itched. When I looked at them, there were rather inflamed puncture marks under each knuckle. "How'd this happen?" I asked her, brandishing the wounds.

"Oh, I was playing Poke-In-The-Dark, and you happened to be--"

"Nuh-uh. None of that. For once in my life, I'm being serious. How'd these get here?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"_Yes!_ Now stop playing games with me!" Well, would you be happy if someone'd done this to you?

"There were tracking nanytes in your hands. I removed them," she said, and overrode me when I tried to interrupt. "Not only could they track you, they could track me, and they were programmed to explode if your conditioning failed."

I said nothing. She went on, "It is for the best that they are gone. What is strange is that these are Replicator-based."

"I give up!" I practically screamed at her. Tossing my hands into the air, I headed for home. She followed, and stopped me. Grabbing me by the hair, she made me look at her. I complied, as being bald isn't really on my list of things I'd like to have happen. "Sorry," I said as I blinked away tears. (What? She's really strong. It hurt.) "But, begging your royal pardon, what right have you to go about knocking people out and removing their nanytes?" I asked.

She released my hair, and I rubbed at my scalp. (And tried to neaten my bouffant hairstyle, but we'll leave that out of the mainstream, shall we?) "You aren't a person," she said, trying to cheer me. "You barely qualify as a sentient being."

"I guess our meanings of that are different. I don't wanna know any more about Ghouls, or Wraiths, or old people. I just wanna go home and make really bad pizza. I wanna read Liz's diary, and parody it at her online." All that with only one breath.

"Alrighty then," she said, and I was left with the horrid idea of Jim Carey and the Whosamacallums together in the same universe.

* * *

I feel dejected. Liz is at therapy. It's not her therapy day. Sam - just picture a bouncy redheaded girl, and you'll be fine - called and said that Liz's mom had had another nervous breakdown, and she'd dragged Liz down with her. Supposedly, she'd pumped Uncle Byron for information, and he'd ended up getting drunk from about six of Sam's signature martinis, (okay, so what she's not even eighteen yet; we have problems) and told her _everything_. Poor Sammykins…

So, no diary, unless I use the window, and one of the aunts will see me and make me use the door and force tea on me again and it's too late in the day for caffeine and… Alright. I've had a few Pixie Styx.

K'ata says I'm overreacting to the loss of my nanytes. Bugger the nanytes. I'm reacting quite normally to being lied to, drugged, scanned, drugged again she told me, scanned again, operated on, and all manner of other tests done on me too, "since I was already out". Forget this. I can't even remember the summer of my tenth year, I don't want to. I know it has something to do with that, and I don't want to know. Guilt is innocence, innocence is ignorance, ignorance is bliss, and to the Catholic Church, bliss is guilt. See, it all comes full circle.

Of course, K'ata says that I'm being stupid in my quest for un-knowledge. Bugger her too.

Unpleasant thoughts keep entering my head. Like, perhaps, maybe, I could let Lawrence the Dog out and make him kill the poodles. But this is bad, my more logical self says. Yes, it's bad, and that's why we want to do it, Morrick-Gollum says. But we don't want to kill the poodles. Yes we do. No no no!

Meanwhile, K'ata is reading _Jane Eyre_. I think she can see my obvious Gollum moment, and I think she's ignoring me. Or is she. I don't know. I know nothing, nothing, nothing of this, ha ha ha ha!

And then I got thumped on the head with _Jane_. K'ata stabbed another needle into my neck, and the poodles that were swirling around on the ceiling disappeared. "I suppose you have a good reason for that," I said chipperly.

"One, you were hallucinating, and two, your conditioning is beginning to surface," she said glumly. "It might be wise to sedate you."

"Lovely. Go ahead. You own me. In fact, I sign away all rights to free will and all that beaurecratic nonsense. Bah, who needs it? You own me, and it's never been any different, ha ha…" and on and on I babbled until she put the needle in my neck.

A few hours later, I awoke in my room, sprawled out on my bed. A note with really pretty handwriting was taped to my forehead, and it read,

_Morrick,_

_Do not leave your house. Do not take any medication. I will explain later._

And at the bottom of it was a weird symbol, like a cursive G only with way too many loops.

"Great," I said dully. "She can write now."

* * *

A/N: The lawn gnome made me do it. Morrick is gonna kill me if ever he finds this.

olafur: Ha ha, funny image, but no, he'd faint, more likely. 'Tis quite alright. I am an enigma, to be sure. But hmm… they aren't supposed to come search Earth for a while now… Or are they? With that paranoid note…

zappy: Cookies are the food of the gods. And reviews are fun, but I'm not all that concerned with them. Besides, the lawn gnome gets after me if I waste too much time checking for reviews. 0.O


	6. The Zipper Goes in the Back, part 2

A/N: This is kinda weird. I think I had a moment of stupidness, and submitted before the chapter was done. Oh well. We at the Turiya Foul Mental Hospital will figure it out sooner or later.

* * *

5 ½. The Zipper Goes in the Back, part 2

I hate her. I really, truly hate her. "No medication," her note said, and why? Why? She probably knew that those shots would make me ill. Oh, everything from the collarbones down felt fine, but up… I wondered absently if she'd hit any nerves with those needles.

Angsty, I sat at my computer desk (which was covered in junk, I'll admit) and contemplated the Internet. Maybe it would hold the answers… I typed in my approximation of the spellings of "Yautja" and other stuff on Google. I got the "Did you mean…?" thing for most of it, but a few were alright. All I found was nonsense and a few fan fiction sites. The nonsense I avoided, but Liz had mentioned fan fiction, and its reality.

From that, I learned that human beings have dirty minds. Really, why would anyone date outside of their species for any practical reason? But then, I remembered those McCaffrey books… Ok, sometimes it's alright, but - as I stared horrorstruck at the screen - that just ain't right, right there. The one thing that I _did_ learn, though, is that until about forty Earth years of age, Yautja are considered teenagers. In other words, I'm dealing with someone who is possibly lower than me on the emotional and hormonal ladder. (If the female of the species even has hormones; no one seemed clear on that.) So, the arguing is normal. Jolly.

I was reading Harry Potter fluff when K'ata triumphantly returned. I ignored her as she entered the retreat area, but as she approached me, I turned around in my swirly-chair and said in my Tony Bennett voice, "Hello, beautiful."

She watched me curiously for a brief moment, and then muttered, "Still hallucinating."

"Actually, my dear, you are rather pretty. Just not on a sane human scale. And I'm not hallucinating; I've just got a very bad headache."

"Sorry to hear it." Well, we'll work on the vocal emotion later. Unless that apathetic tone was intended.

I rocked in my chair silently, and looked at her. She'd changed her clothes. Light beige Bermuda-looking shorts and a green-black shimmery top, and there were copper beads in her hair instead of the gold ones I'd become used to. Her knees and elbows were wrapped tightly in some sort of thick, black gauze. Thick copper bangles glimmered on her wrists, with diamonds set into them. Why all the pomp? What on Earth - oh, crap, it's what's not on Earth that worries me - had she been doing?

"So, er, Miss Universe, can I get some pain pills now?" I asked innocently. To my surprise, she laughed lightly and gestured to the door. "I hear and obey, El Presidentina, most Merciful Being--"

"Just get the medication, my favorite numbskull," she said, still laughing quietly. I did. Too bad they don't make Instant Advil, you know, like instant coffee? That would be wonderful…

"Hey, Spacemonkey, why're y'all in the movies?" I asked in my "Tennessee" accent. Okay, so what, I talk like a Yankee, big deal, I have to do accents to keep people from asking what part of "up Narth" I'm from.

She rolled her eyes. "They're an embarrassment to the species, I hope you know." Nods. "Alright, you know what a conspiracy is?" Nods. "Do you know what a higher being is?"

"You?"

She contemplated the ceiling for a moment before saying, "Morrick, even if that_ is_ true - and it is - what have we discussed about you not talking when I have to explain something to you?" I covered my mouth with my hand. She seemed to consider this satisfactory. "Yes, the Yautja are _higher_ on the evolutionary ladder than humans. But, believe it or not, we are not the _highest_ there." She toyed with one of her bangles. "Some beings are composed of flesh, as we are. Others, light or water. Some change their forms; we can do this to a very limited extent." She extended her arm and covered part of mine with it; her skin changed like a chameleon's would change, copying my color exactly. "Do not speak," she said as her skin changed back to its orange-y beige-y color. "Now, other creatures have no physical forms. They are pure energy. They can either use existing bodies, or they can influence others' minds, simply to have their opinions heard."

I had to interrupt. My memory of _that_ summer was returning. Someone else had told me exactly this same thing, except they'd straight away given the fleshless ones a name:

"Demons? You're talking about demons, aren't you?" I asked her faintly. She gave me the severe look.

"I do not know what these--"

"Look in my mind, dummy! It's all there!" I said quickly, before she could finish and berate me for interrupting. She just looked at me, and then I felt the terrible pain returning, the pain that no mortal creation could heal. My hands instinctively covered my mouth to keep the screams in. How long had it been since this'd happened, I tried desperately to remember. Nothing, nothing…

K'ata was shaking me again. I probably looked like a rag doll, with my fluffy hair flying. "Morrick, breathe." In one hand she held both of my wrists, in the other my shoulder, shaking me. I was fighting her, I realized, and when that glorious epiphany occurred, my strength failed. She released me only when I started breathing again.

"Conditioning?" I asked her when I felt less… blue. She nodded, and pulled another needle from her thigh pocket. "No! I refuse to be sedated again!" I said as she grabbed my hair. Since when did one's hair become an official leash?

"It is not to sedate you. This," she said, shaking the needle, "is full of nanytes."

"But you just took nanytes out of my hands," I protested.

"Those were tracking nanytes. There are different kinds of nanytes, you know. Some are implanted, to track and explode later, like yours, and some are the typical bloodstream kind that help healing and increase intellect. (We use these.) I've reprogrammed some of ours to repair and reverse your conditioning. Whatever they wanted you to forget…" She put the needle to my neck.

"It would be lovely if someone at least asked for my consent on anything," I said, with my usual lack of subtlety.

She gave me a look. "Morrick, do you want my help?"

I made a show of considering. "Naahhyes," I said.

"I heard a yes," she said, and plunged the needle in.

"That hurt," I said with a grimace. "Am I supposed to be feeling anything?"

"Nope."

Alrighty then! "Okay, can I go back to my life now?" I asked sarcastically.

"Life?" she asked. "Honey, you signed away any life you had when you acknowledged my existence." At my horrified look, she said, "Goating. Er, kidding. Oh, bugger, I don't know. Your mind's too jumbled to get anything from."

You have no idea how disconcerting it is to have your alien roommate use your vocabulary. "You ain't right," I declared. "Look, I have to clean." Feeling devilish, I asked her, "Wanna help?"

"I--" she said. "Ha ha, very funny. Not. You try anything, you're a dead man, understand?"

"Yes, Clint Eastwood. I hear and obey, O Most Merciful Being--"

"Oh, do shut up!"

"Help with the cushions?" I asked her as we surveyed the living room. It was in desperate need of dusting, vacuuming, and de-garbaging. The cushions on the couch - and there were about twenty of them - were to be vacuumed, and piled by the loveseat, Claudia's orders. (You might think I'm a wimp for letting my sister boss me. Well, I am, as she's bigger and meaner than me.) "The cushions aren't hard to vacuum, they're just time consuming," I explained after I'd shown her how to use the mini vacuum. "Without them, I'd probably finish the rest in half the time."

"Fine," she said. "Is this always the result of human celebrations?" she asked, staring openly at the cans, chip bags, popcorn and other stuff on the floor, walls, furniture and, in the case of one unlucky glob of cake, the ceiling. Claudia had thrown a Nascar party with her college friends.

"Humans, probably less damage. Claudia, though… Yeah, pretty much. There've been worse, though. She actually had to pay me to clean _that_ mess."

"I do not wish to know," she said uneasily, and went to work on the cushions. I did the rest. I even finished before her. (To be fair, she only had two left. I killed the other two with the big vacuum's attachments.) "That was unpleasant. We have machines to do our work for us," she said haughtily. You'd think that might annoy me, but I think it's kinda cute, now that I know that she's younger than me. That just sounded weird in my mind…

"I am older than you!" she yelled at me. "I am five Earth years older than you!"

"Yeah, and you're still a child. You won't be considered an adult until you're like forty in Earth years. If you were human, you'd only be like nine or ten now." I'm going to be beaten to a hamburger-y pulp in a moment, I just know it.

"You do not need to tell me what I already know," she said, head lowered and mandibles clicking listlessly.

Crap, I'd upset her. This is like when Liz stops complaining, and lets me have my way with the remote. I automatically hear a snake rattling, because she'll get me back somehow; it's better to just give up the remote. I was hearing the rattling now too. "Oh, K'ata, I'm sorry." I laced my fingers into hers, and said, "I didn't mean it to sound mean. I was only curious."

"There is no need to apologize for what is true," she said, still listless. "I have been trying to deny the truth, and I cannot." She shook her head.

"You're still smarter than I am," I said, and stuck out my tongue at her. She grabbed my nose and shook gently. "Dat id nod funny," I said with feigned seriousness, and ruined it by giggling.

She released me, and said, "You have other tasks to complete." Indeed I did. Claudia had left a list on the refrigerator, and there were other things on it that I could do now without ruining the cheery moment. Laundry - mine, Mom's, hers - and a list of what I wanted for eating the next week or so. Clean the kitchen. The bedrooms and bathrooms need cleaning. Blah, blah, blah. I dealt with the laundry, sorted it, you probably know, the typical laundry stuff. That dread process started, I went to the list making.

Most of the stuff I put on the thing would have made someone familiar with Cantonese cuisine cringe. It was just to annoy Cloudy. Luckily, she knew what my dietary needs are better than I did. (And after all, I got that diet book from her.)

After that, I cleaned everything. I felt like I should have been wearing one of those French maid uniforms. Much worse, I actually _had_ one. (Well, you can't watch _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_, or whatever it is, and not be affected in some… way. Me, I turned all of my friends into crossdressers, along with myself.) I didn't really want to put it on, but… No! I will resist!

"Why are you dressed as a female?" K'ata asked from the door. Laughing, she typed something into her computer-thing, and a hologram of me, in the dress, appeared. "I'm sending this along with my letter of resignation," she told me. "And a lot of the other stuff you do that entertains me."

"You've been filming me?" I asked incredulously. "Never mind, these heels are killing me."

"I'm sending that as well."

"Want me to do my Mr. Sexy, Benny Mardones dance too?" I asked sarcastically.

"Might help," she said cheerfully, and then followed it with a series of rolling clicks.

"Do you want your people to think that I'm a hooker?" I asked, shocked.

She laughed roguishly and said again, "Might help."

I, however, searched diligently for the Lazy Camera Dude. I had a bit of trouble finding him, as he was under the computer desk in Cloudy's room. "Hey, dude?"

"Yeah?"

"Know the alien chick?"

"Uh, yeah, not personally or anything, but, uh, yeah, we talk, sometimes, yeah."

"Uh huh," I said, marveling at human stupidity. "Well, yes, I think that she's turning into a pirate. You know, the Johnny Depp type."

"Oh, dude, wicked awesome!" he said, and then, as a side note, told me, "You're wearing a dress, little dude."

"Someone please shoot me," I groaned at the mauve walls. "And neither of you," I said to K'ata and the camera guy.

And thus continued my day. (For any of you weird people, I took the dress off after a while and returned to my pants, socks, etc.)

* * *

"Um, Morrick, could you please get your self down here?" Cloudy yelled up the stairs. Drat the woman. Drat her, drat her drat her! (In case you're wondering, swearing is the language of the ignorant. Yeah, that's a part of my conditioning that hasn't worn off yet.) "Now!"

"What, you crazy hippie?" I asked her.

"Notice anything odd, Morrick?" she asked me.

"Um… There's no cake on the ceiling, now?" You cannot pay me to be nice to this woman.

She glared at me, and said, "True. What else?"

"I don't know, you stupid hippie! You're the one that dragged me away from playing Murder in the Dark!" Okay, actually, it was a feet-soaking session. Those heels hurt.

"I am not a hippie, you little--!" she calmed herself. "Morrick, if you'd please direct your attention to the sofa, you should see what I mean."

This must be what marriage is like. I didn't see anything wrong, so I said to my sister, "Ain't nothing wrong with it, hippie."

"Look at the bloody cushions!" she yelled at me. She meant the big ones that I'd done.

"What's wrong with them, hippie?" I asked charmingly.

She covered her face and started trying to gouge out her eyes. After a moment, she said, "Ow. And look _closely_ at the cushions, Morrick. See anything different about them?"

I answered dutifully, "No, hippie."

She swore viciously at me. "The zippers go on the back, you moron." As I turned to leave, she muttered, "Fascist."

"Communist hippie," I muttered back. Actually, I love the hippies. But, due to my sister's dislike of them, I had to bring them into this a few months ago. But, don't worry, no hippies were harmed in the making of this… whatever it is.

I returned to my room, and found K'ata trying to work my computer. I stress the word trying. It reminded me of that Star Trek movie where Scotty tries to talk to the computer through the mouse, except for the fact that she was speaking Yautja and typing and swearing in English all at the same time. "Hello," I said neutrally. "Has Mac," so what, I named my computer after MacGyver, "offended you in some way, that you feel you need to punish him?"

"Yes. He shut of when I--" She stopped and asked me, "Your computers have a gender system?"

"Yup. Male, female, hemale, shemale, itmale, nuetermale, mechanomale, anonymale… No, I'm… goating. It's just more human silliness." Yes, I have read all of the _Xanth_ books. Do you still wonder why I'm strange? "He shut off when you _what_, exactly?"

"Um… Nothing." At my glare, she said, "Okay, I give. I was going to destroy all of the information that you have gathered on me."

"What information?" I asked, honestly confused.

She looked at me for a moment. "Oh. That wasn't you."

"What _are_ you talking about?"

"Never you mind, dearie. There's a boy with an appointment at the butcher's soon, though."

"I hope you find better fitting _awu'asa_ before then. With all the noise that set makes, he'll hear you from a mile away," I said, referring to the full body armor.

She sighed. "There's no help for it. I'll have to try the male _awu'asa_. Might work." She glanced at me. "How do you know that term?" she asked curiously.

"The Glorious Internet. And don't bring the corpse back here. Goat blood in the carpet, I can explain. I can't get human blood out, though." Hey, I'm morbid. Deal with it. Feeling a sick sense of fear, I asked her to describe the boy.

"Taller than you, black hair, lighter skin than you, wearing a black trench coat, black leathers, boots, etc. He wore black lenses as well. Looked very skinny, too." I'd been teaching her about Earth fashion. Handy, eh?

"Please don't kill that one."

"Sorry, I have to. He's seen my ship, Morrick. You and Liz, I trust, but this other was being a spy. That's death, and you know it."

"He's trustworthy, though. And one of my best friends," I added desperately. "Look, I'll make him apologize to you for spying. It's just what he does. He searches for weird stuff, takes it back to his house, and analyzes it. He's just weird like that." She was going to let up, I noted carefully. "I'll Email him now, and he'll come over tomorrow. Alright?"

"You talk more than any human I've ever seen," she said boredly. "It's just lovely. More people to know that I exist."

"Hey, it isn't that bad. Wanna play Monopoly?" I asked.

She groaned, and I heard the words "Not again" quite clearly. With a stupid grin on my face, I went to get the Monopoly game.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I know, I'm a bad person. Naughty, naughty Riya.

Scarface: Thanks for the review! Just for the sake of my sanity, I don't think any of her friends will show up, but, of course, some might not be considered friends. grin grin wink wink I don't think she thought she was being mean though.

Olafur: Happen? Oh, dear. Well, ahem, there is no romantic thing going on, in case anyone else was thinking that. And what are reviews for, if not to consider thoughtfully over one's seventh cup of coffee?

Zappy: Ah, but does K'ata know she's being "mean"? Nanytes are - in this case - really, really small, like microscopic small, robots that are used to either - oh, I did explain that. Woops.

does the spam song


	7. The Introduction of Sam, Tim, and Alvin

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a lawn gnome. And how does that help me?

* * *

6. The Introduction of Sam, Tim, and Alvin

Thursdays have been ruined for me. If I even hear the word Thursday, I swear, I'll go to therapy with Liz.

Why, you wonder. Why are Thursdays ruined for the beautiful Morrick? I'll tell you. K'ata may well kill my best friends. You know K'ata. Anyway, they might _die_ today, and all she can do is listen to the Numa Numa song on repeat. Alas, I thought it was funny at first, but if I hear "Mi ah he…" one more time I swear to Mother Flame and Father Universe I'll…

Ahem. Well, the good news is that I remember everything from that summer, and we - K'ata and I - were able to puzzle out what I was programmed for. She wasn't very happy with me for waking her up at four in the morning, but it was necessary. "To forget and lead a normal life, wiser, yet remembering nothing of it," my foot! She dragged me back out to the ship, which had had the atmosphere changed in places so I could come aboard, how considerate, to scan me again. Remember, it causes mild temporary insanity? Llama song, with lime dancing, I think she recorded me doing that too. At least I stayed conscious the whole time.

Thursday, waiting for my friends to show up. We sat in the living room, watching _Name That Fruit_ on the tele. She was relaxing in the recliner, I was on the couch, biting my nails. Just… waiting.

"I think your friends are here," she said.

Her hearing must be a lot better than mine, too, because I only heard the rumble of three four-wheelers when I went out on the deck. They weren't even visible yet. I watched as the front two played _Swerve_, the game of undrunken driving they'd apparently made up. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye… or a limb, I'd said then.

Tim, the spy, with short black hair and transitions lenses, wearing his trademark black leather ensemble, was in the lead, followed by Sam, the bouncy girl with short red hair and pink mascara, wearing almost nothing. (A bathing suit top and shorts.) Alvin, my favorite black guy in the whole world, with short dreads, turquoise eyeliner, and just shorts on, drove a bit more sedately behind the other two, not inclined to play _Swerve_. We all thought Tim was mad for wearing leather in summer, but he, being an anarchist, really didn't care.

"Ahoy, me laddiebuck!" Sam yelled at me. "How goes the fort?"

"Aye, Captain Sam, all goes not well, as there be terrible things afoot… and aship, too, for that matter," I replied. Her _Pirates of the Caribbean_ obsession was infectious. Really, it was just an excuse to maul and warp the English language.

"Y'all made me miss lunch," Alvin said grumpily.

"Raid the kitchen, Claudia just shopped," I said. "Just get in the house, now."

"Why?" asked Tim. "Doth there be dragons here?"

"Worse than dragons, and she happens to be in the house, so c'mon."

That was all Tim needed. He was, after all, our resident cryptozoologist. Weird crap was his specialty.

We went to the kitchen, and Alvin proceeded to raid, pillage, and plunder as I poured iced tea for all.

"Uh, little buddy, what're the ages for the fair?" Sam asked me. I was avoiding looking at her, because I invariably ended up looking at the wrong parts. And, as a result, getting slapped.

"Cavaliers' France and Imperial Rome," I said. "We're in the French bit."

"Y'all might be," Alvin said around a sandwich. Hearing someone with a British accent say "y'all" is frightening at first, but he says it so much… "I'm a Roman cavalryman, tunic and all."

"You might not be going," I said to all of them. I was greeted by a suspicious look from Tim. He was the only one paying attention to me, as Sam and Alvin were discussing their outfits.

"Why won't we be going?" he asked slowly. "It has something to do with what's in the house, doesn't it?"

"It has as much to do with you as it does with her," I said softly. Let the other two yap. "Tim, do you believe in aliens?"

His eyes went wide. "You know I believe in everything."

"Aliens, Tim. Surely, surely you believe in their presence on Earth. After all, you have _proof_, proof you've seen with your own eyes," I said intensely. What can I say, I'm a ham.

"How--?" he asked. "How did you know? That can't've been you with that thing--"

"That thing is a friend, and her name is K'ata, and she will kill you for spying, unless you apologize," I said into sudden silence. Sam and Alvin were watching me now. I blushed. "Well, you'll all have to meet her anyway," I mumbled.

"Dude, you've got an alien in your house?" Alvin said Britishly. Sam shook her head and started humming some Celine Dion song.

I heaved a world weary sigh. "She's in the living room. Not yet!" I said as Tim dashed for the door. "You'll all be polite, I trust. She won't like it if you're rude, or stupid."

"Duh, now can we go?" Tim asked. I released his arm. We all looked into the living room before we went in. We found K'ata flipping through the channels, growling dissolutely every now and then. "Oh, Holy Mother of God," Tim whispered. (As you can see, he's a Catholic. Poor Tim, can't join our cult…) He started praying.

Alvin and Sam gave each other their we're-conversing-mentally look. They looked at K'ata, then back into the other's eyes. "As the world is ending, will you marry me, Sam?" Alvin asked solemnly.

"Certainly," Sam said. And then she fainted, and Alvin caught her as she fell.

By this time, K'ata had noticed us. Watching us, she started laughing quietly. "'T ain't funny," I said to her as Sam was carried back to the kitchen by her new fiancé. Tim was on his knees now, praying for deliverance, I recognized.

"Yes, it is," she giggled at me. She threw the remote at me and said, "Fix it," meaning the child lock. She wanted to watch the second _Predator_ movie. I complied, and returned the remote to her.

"Tim, get up. You know there's no one god," I said at him.

"You only think that because the fairies brainwashed you," he said.

"That's truer than you might think, Maehe-ronnim," I said, using his old name, the one we used back when we were little children.

"Crap," he said. "What, has the brainwashing worn off?" I nodded. "Crap," he said again.

"Find another explicative," K'ata told him.

Tim tried to jump on me, and failed miserably. "It talked to me," he said, frightened.

"I'm a she, not an it," K'ata said. "Morrick and I established that on my first night here." She glanced at his wide-eyed, gaping expression and said, "Naughty-minded boy."

"Ew, Tim, that's just disgusting," I said, guessing what she meant.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "It just sounded, well, a bit, you know…"

"Yeah, and I wish I didn't," K'ata said.

Alvin returned with a tipsy Sam, who wasn't really drunk, but just liked pretending, leaning on him. "Nice dreads," he told K'ata.

"Same to you," she said.

"Are you a robot?" Sam asked. When K'ata shook her head, she said, "So, you're really an alien?"

"Yes, and so are you," she teased. I thought she was being remarkably nice to them.

"You've been around Morrick too long," she returned. "You're beginning to sound like him."

"How dare you," I said in mock anger. "I said not to be rude."

"Yes, that's very insulting," K'ata said, mimicking me. We laughed at the chastised look on Sam's face. I even pointed.

"If you want that to remain intact, m'boy…" Sam said threateningly.

"Alien!" Tim moaned.

"Would you like a sandwich?" Alvin asked K'ata. I explained that human food sickened her. "Oh. Pity, that." He went off to get another one, and Tim followed him, asking if Alvin would hold off on the pickles.

"And then there were two," K'ata intoned soberly.

"Are you carnivorous?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"Moi?" she asked. "Surely you jest." Seeing that all was _not_ a merry jest, she said gloomily, "Sadly, no. We prefer chemicals just as much as any other race of higher beings. I'm not going to eat you!" she snarled.

"Sam, give it a rest," I said. "I'm alive, ain't I? And I have the worst luck of any one of us! And I'm tastier…" You don't want to know.

"No, I don't," K'ata said with a shudder.

"What?" Sam asked blankly. I drew a blank for a moment and then remembered the telepathy. I told her about it. "Eww…" she said. "You mean," she said to K'ata, "you can go into his mind?" Nodded. "Does he really love Liz as much as he puts on?" Nods. "She'll be thrilled," Sam said dryly.

"Spy," I muttered.

"You know you love me," she said, grinning evilly. And off she went to get a snack, which left me alone with K'ata.

"Are you going to kill them now?" I asked softly.

"No." She had that _Morrick-is-in-trouble-I-shall-laugh_ look though. Probably because of what she was going to tell Liz. Bloody telepathy. "I shall scan them," she said wickedly.

"Spot on," Alvin said from behind the door. "So long as you don't kill us, we're spiffy." He and the other two came back and colonized the sofa. Tim gave me a sandwich.

K'ata pointed at Alvin, looked at me, and said, "I'll be taking that one with me when we leave." Alvin ignored that, and continued to watch Sam.

"Uh, why?" I asked. When _we_ leave? Oh, crap. We? I _am_ doomed.

"You, Liz, that one," K'ata said, "you'll relieve the boredom. My first plan isn't going to work. The messenger drones I send messages to are equipped with the space equivalent of Star-69." We'd redialed the people who constantly call for the Chinese take-away and asked them for pizza. "It may take them awhile, but when my superiors get my messages, a recovery fleet will arrive _en force_." She looked at the present company, which was watching her, and said to me, "That was highly out of character for me."

"You're getting into the part too much," I said.

"Upshut, you two," the director said.

Alvin made a rude hand gesture at him. The British version, anyway. This was getting weird.

"That was weird," Tim said. "Hey, why aren't you taking us?"

"Sam has to marry some Gou'ald guy, and you have a television show to start. In other words, you have destinies. Not much of one, for you," she said to Tim. "You get abducted by the Asgard aliens."

"YES! At last! Where can they be contacted? They can have me NOW!" And then Tim fell silent. "Wait, how do you know this?"

"The writer talks to me," she said. "And they can't have you _now_ because the one who does the abductions is still in jail."

"Oh."

"Oh, I will never marry, and I'll be no man's wife, 'cause I'm a stayin' single, for the rest of me life," Sam sang. K'ata chuckled. "Well, I'm not marrying anyone. Especially whatever you just said I was gonna marry."

"Riiight." K'ata looked towards the door. "Liz is here."

"Hide me!" I yelled as I dove behind the couch. I was certain that Liz wouldn't find it at all odd that my human friends and my alien friend were all here and I wasn't.

The door opened and closed, and everyone was quiet. We all knew how Liz could be after a lengthy therapy session. I heard the clipping of her boots, too. She was bound to be in an unpleasant mood.

"Well," the love of my life said, "aren't we all comfy cozy here?" I heard a bar stool being Liz-handled. "Aren't we just having a wonderful time here, obviously doing bad things because-- Morrick, I can see your hair!"

"Aah!" I was pulled out by Alvin, who insisted that if we were going to be ranted at, we should all be present.

Now that I could see her, I noticed that she was wearing stiletto pumps, not boots, as I'd thought. She'd been shopping. This was getting much, much worse. "Well, what do you have to say for yourselves?" she asked us patronizingly.

"Faire le son de cochon," Alvin said cheerfully. Lucky Alvin. He can always pretend not to know English when we're being fussed at.

"Shut up!" Liz screamed. "What did he say?" she asked the rest of us.

No one answered. We don't know French. K'ata seems to, though. "Make the pig sound," she said, carefully neutral.

"What?" she asked in disbelief.

"Make the pig sound," K'ata said again.

For one shining, crystalline moment, we saw the very essence of rage embodied in Liz. Then all crumbled into an oblivion of laughter, followed by hugging, and Alvin making more sandwiches.

"So," Sam began cautiously, "how'd it go?"

"Same old, same old," Liz said. "New prescription, new shoes, new diagnosis. Sylvia suggested that all of you come to therapy too."

"Did you tell her we'd rather bang our heads against brick walls and stab ourselves repeatedly with salad forks that talk to her?" Tim asked sweetly.

Liz was silent. Then, "Um, Alvin, how'd your swim meet go?"

"You didn't tell her that?" Tim demanded.

"Je suis venu. J'ai nagé. J'ai donné un coup de pied le bout de singe," Alvin said happily.

"Went that well, did it?" I asked. We don't go by the words, we go by the expressions and the tone of voice he uses.

"Oui."

"We love our dirty Frenchman," Sam said lugubriously. "Even if he does change his underwear too much to be a real Frenchman."

"Last time he tried to be truly French, (by not changing his underwear for three months) , we had to subdue it (the underwear) with hammers," I told K'ata.

"Thank you for that beautiful image," she said sarcastically.

"We still have the hammers, don't we?" Alvin asked me.

"Uh, I think I buried them. We aren't going to need them again, are we?" I asked.

He shuddered. "I hope not. Sometimes I forget…" His very fragile attention span was drawn away by Tim struggling with a bag of Cheetos. "Regarder le singe meurt," he said with a laugh.

"Well, either Morrick has no scissors, or they're all shoved…" And then the bag opened. "Never mind."

"Claudia hides the scissors from me," I said sadly.

"Riiight," Alvin said, winking conspicuously at Sam.

"Oh, Liz, Morrick loves you," Sam said as though she'd just remembered to.

Liz gave me the I'll-deal-with-you-later look and nodded at Sam. "He also loves bad pizza. What's new?"

"Trovo questo budino per essere abbastanza... malvagio," Tim said, referring to my Fear Factor Jell-O pudding.

"Don't eat that," I said. "Don't touch it. You might lose a finger."

"Why's it in your refrigerator if I can't eat it?" he asked glumly as he put it away.

"Do your parents just not feed you or something?" I asked everyone.

"You could do the same if you ever came over to our houses," Alvin said. "We have leftovers." Yes, and get food poisoning too.

The phone rang. Sam, being the telephone addicted chick that she is, answered it, and gave it to me, saying it was Claudia. Claudia proceeded to yell at me for having a party. What, what I ask you, is wrong with her?

"Morrick, when I get home, there'd better be only you in that house," she said menacingly. "I mean it."

"You don't own it, hippie," I said obnoxiously. "We're going to have strippers, and you can't stop us, you Commie!"

"Morrick--!" And then I hung up.

"She's gonna kill you," Tim said after a brief, respectful silence. "She won't do it now, but she'll find some way to get you later. Classic female revenge-getting technique. I've seen it at least fifty-eight times." Sam and Liz threw pillows at him. To my surprise, so did K'ata. She grinned when Tim huddled in his corner of the couch in the fetal position.

I sighed. "I shouldn't be so mean to her. After all, she can't help it if she _is_ a lower life form than I am."

"Vanity is a sin," Tim said disdainfully.

"If this is a sin," Sam said, "I don't ever wanna be good."

"You ain't right."

"Amen to that," Sam declared as she stretched out across the sofa, using everyone as a pillow. "So, do we really get strippers?"

"Eh, no," I said. "Unless Alvin wants to play _Rocky Horror_?"

He shuddered eloquently, and told us never again in this lifetime would he don the ceremonial fishnets, heels, and gloves, strut around singing, and leap in the pool with full makeup on. Liz applauded.

"Morrick does that," K'ata said wickedly. "I have some of it filmed." You evil trollop! "Am not," she said at me.

"We wanna see," they all said in some form or another. And she showed them a hologram of me in that dress, putting my hair up. It was really almost funny when I looked at it from a… Alright, it was infuriating. I'll find a way to get you back, I thought.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for being so slow. A Stargate idea grabbed ahold of me and well… Argh.

Zappy: Monopoly is easy, once you change the rules to your own liking. : )

Olafur: Okay, two points here. One, Morrick is 14, and he's already committed to Liz. K'ata is way too young to be having any romantic notions of any kind. And two, even if K'ata was older, why would she settle for Morrick, when there are plenty of other guys that are actually her species roaming about-- Oops, you aren't supposed to know that yet. Just forget you read that. And OF COURSE there'll be someone from the government. Morrick's dad works for the Stargate program, for gods' sakes. Er… oops. Forget you read that as well…

Mousewolf: Your overwhelming enthusiasm is an excellent encouragement. :D

* * *

An advisement, plot twist ahead. New aliens, too. 


	8. Amnion Technology and Xenomorph Girls

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that's been previously copyrighted. So, that leaves Morrick, Sam, Liz, Tim, and Alvin at my tender mercies. Oh, joy. Oh, yeah, and those other people…

* * *

7. Amnion Technology and Xenomorph Girls

France really isn't as smelly or dirty as the guidebooks say it is. Or maybe that's because we've not really in France, we're just in a clever simulacrum. Or, there's been an incident with the space-time continuum.

"Or, we're at your silly fair," K'ata, who wasn't liking this at all, growled at me. She was wearing her full body armor, which was heavy and uncomfortable - alright, I'd been playing with it - and not fun to wear. However, the invisibility-jigger worked better with it than when she was wearing just clothes.

"'T isn't silly," I growled back. "It's historic, and it's pretty." For the last half hour, I'd been trying to explain the cultural value of the Fair of Ages. She'd been sticking to her idea that it was just another excuse for human silliness. And the horrid thing was, this hadn't started as an argument. _She_ was the one who asked about it. I'd only been trying to answer truthfully; I can't help it if I'm biased.

"Still, I don't understand why _I_ have to be here," she muttered. "I'm missing _Name That Fruit_."

"You really love that show, don't you?" Liz asked from beneath her veils. Rather than duel with me today as a lady, she chose to be a nun. Nuns don't use swords. Bothersome…

"If she went on it, she'd win," I said crossly. "She's watched it so much that she's found a pattern in the fruit."

Liz whistled appreciatively. "Fruit patterning. The job of the future. Data patterning, minus the data, plus a shiny banana!"

"Bananas aren't shiny," K'ata corrected her. Then she jumped and asked, "What do you know about data patterning?"

"It's boring," I said.

"What Sir Morrique said," Liz said.

"Shh, the others know me as Morrick the Beautiful, and you should too, dearling," I said, wrapping a knightly arm around Sister Liz, who promptly slapped me with my own gauntlet. "Ow."

"Do not molest members of the clergy," she said severely.

I stuck my tongue out at her and ran away before she could retaliate. Liz and retaliation mix too well, you see, and it is always painful. For me, anyway.

"C'mon, Lady K'ata, I have a yen to fence," I declared triumphantly.

"That sounds like it hurts," she observed calmly. "I thought a yen was a Chinese - whatever _they_ are - monetary unit."

"'T is," I said. "But, it's also like a need. And don't be cheeky. 'T isn't nice."

"Why don't you just _say_ need instead of yen?"

"Because, silly, I have to sound grand," I said happily.

"I think you are suffering from an endorphin overdose. I have a yen to stick another needle into your neck," she said as she lunged playfully at me.

I dodged her and feinted back at her. She held my wrists and told me that this was boring. Personally, I thought she was afraid I might beat her. She wasn't really trained for fighting, I'd figured out when she was messing around with my weapons. (I collect knives, swords, throwing stars, even a few pole-arms. They're all piled higgledy-piggledy in my closet.) She was trying to get my seven-point stars to open, and not succeeding at all. Technically, that's good, because if you open one before you throw it, you'll end up with a lovely new hand piercing, which may or may not rot, as I put snake venom on almost all my blades, especially the assassination ones.

"No more needles, miss. And lemme go. People are staring, you'll see if you look over there," I said and nodded to the small teenage tourist group. Wiccans, I guessed because of the t-shirts they were wearing. They came from all over for their summits and Sabbats and such, as Uncle Byron was very… friendly. "My spirit guide and I are having a disagreement," I called to them.

"Awesome," one especially sensitive teenager said. "Hey, how do you get your to talk to you? Ours only come to us with the aid of… uh… herbs, yeah, herbs." Hmm… Maybe I meant stoned instead.

Feeling evil, I told them, "Just jabber your innermost feelings to them constantly, and they'll eventually start telling you to shut it. Thus, you have conversation. It's up to you to make small talk."

They all nodded and said things like cool and groovy and bing-dank, whatever that means. Bloody hippies. They were only in it for the pentagrams; I hate people like that.

"You seem to hate a lot of stuff," K'ata told me.

"Or, we all live in a giant turnip," I mocked.

"You're strange."

"I know. Hey, how's about I be Captain Kirk and you be… you?"

She slapped me. Drat, she's gotten to the _Star Trek_. We are doomed. "Yes, you are. And I thought Tim and Alvin's minds were bad."

"Uh, I was doing this Earth thing… It's called _sarcasm_. You may have heard of it?"

"Just go kill another idiot with that sword, will ya, please?" she said, mimicking my accents. For the record, I haven't killed anyone that I know of, and if I did kill them, well, oops.

Yet, I am pretty good with a sword. I've only ever been beaten twice, and my opponents were both older, bigger, and faster than me, and it took a while for them to wear me down to laziness. So far today, I was two wins for two matches. It goes on and on like this just about every time, and I have to put up with every idiot who's ever bought a samurai sword at a yard sale and wants to challenge me. They have to sign papers saying they won't mess with me if I break their weapon, it's happened so many times. Oh, and insurance dealies, too.

"Even in your mind, you gloat," K'ata said, either shocked or admiring, I don't know which.

"Yep, and I have reason to," was my stubborn retort.

"Perhaps, some day, I will play swordsman with you," she said menacingly.

"I don't know whether to be afraid of death or pleased that you consider me worth your time," I said honestly.

"Whatever, just go play," she said. "And kill them this time. Mercy is for those who deserve it."

"I've told you, I'm not allowed to kill them!" She'd been at me all morning, trying to get me to kill. I was plenty old enough to be blooded, she said, whatever that meant. Some concepts of Earth culture she just refused to grasp.

I was up against a lady this time, an honest to god lady, who happened to be wielding the biggest broadsword I'd ever seen, and she acted as if it was a rapier or something light like that. This, I thought to myself, will be interesting. She was well versed in how one moves in relation to a weapon like that, but she kept getting tangled in her skirts. (Lots of deep purple skirt, loaded with lace and ruffles, that sort of thing.) I was wearing her down, though. One as small as she was - five foot eight, I'd say, slender build, a bit Barbie doll-ish - just couldn't keep up with a weapon that bloody big. It defies physics.

And then my sword practically flew from my hand. She had made an upward swipe, striking just above the hilt of my own weapon, the shock making me release my grip and her momentum sending my sword flying. The tip of her broadsword moved to my throat, the classic question of surrender or die. I chose to surrender, bowed, and complimented her on her technique. She nodded gracefully, never saying a word as I reclaimed my sword and retreated.

* * *

"You're attracted to her," Liz whispered fiercely just outside the crowd. She had confronted me before I had managed to school my expression back to neutrality. I must've looked like a love-sick puppy. 

"I am not," I said hotly. "I'm simply infatuated with her talent, is all."

"You egotistic masochistic--"

"Stop using words I don't know to intimidate me." Ha ha, actually, I know those words, but if Liz keeps thinking that I'm not very bright, she might slip and tell me more about herself. I've known her for years and years, and she's still a bit of a mystery to me.

"Morrick." K'ata prodded me roughly. "That female, the one you fought?"

"What about her?" I asked, feeling annoyed. Let me at least sheath the bloody sword, please people!

"She is not-- Well, no, she may have once been…" K'ata went back to thinking. "I'll be with you in a moment."

"Lovely," I said. "She's turned into a receptionist."

"Congrats on having your butt kicked, boyo," Sam said cheerfully. She was dressed as a prostitute, and had her arm linked with legionary Alvin.

"Hah, too right, he got his bum kicked. Any child could've known that if she could pick that thing up, she'd have some other tricks up those lacy sleeves," Alvin gloated. Why he was gloating, I'd no idea. Maybe he'd been bonked in the head with a catapult or something.

"She wasn't quite human," K'ata said, startling Sam and Alvin, who hadn't known that she was there.

"If you give me a heart attack, I'm having Sam cut off my head and put it on your pillow," Alvin threatened.

"Remind me to keep the doors locked," I told K'ata. "Now, whatcha mean, she ain't human?"

"Oh, she has some of the human components, but the others…" She shook her head. "She's been genetically modified, with mutagens or a DNA sifter, I can't tell which. And before you go tasking me about DNA, Morrick, it's a different acronym."

"Wait, wait, how do you know this?" Liz asked fretfully. "Can you tell what's human and what's not with that mask thing?"

"Well, yes, but I didn't need it for her. She has a xenomorphic tail, along with a few other things, hidden under that skirt."

Sam and Alvin lost their taste for the conversation and went away to throw stuff at the naughty people in the stocks. Tim, because he'd inadvertently looked up a barmaid's skirt, was one of those people.

* * *

K'ata, Liz, and I were reclining under one of the buildings. Okay, strictly, this wasn't a public place, but Liz is probably going to inherit this place anyway. Besides, we won't need to explain why we were under there; we'd just have to explain K'ata. Hmm… That doesn't sound as reassuring here as it did in my head. 

"So, you're telling us that not only has she been _mutated_, but she's also got Yautja weaponry?" I asked.

"And a few Renox knives, and an Asgard communicator," K'ata repeated. "Not to mention that Wraith dart activator… Um, you would call it a car key."

"What is she?" Liz asked.

"Beats me. All I know is she's dangerous." Oh, great, K'ata wanted to kill her. B-e-a-utiful.

Something weird caught my eye. "K'ata, activate your invisibility-jigger," I whispered. She did. They were the same, the other blur a bit smaller than hers, but the same. "Do you see that?" I asked her, my mouth dry.

"Yes," she hissed. She crept towards the thing. It evidently saw her and decided to run. She ran after it, too fast for Liz or me to keep our eyes on.

I sniffed sadly. "My baby's all grown up." Liz whacked me.

"How dare you cheat on me!"

"Hey, I can get tickets to the _Jerry Springer Show_, if you wanna take it that way."

"Er…" _Jerry_ impinged on her etiquette standards. "Let's get out of here. If Byron catches us, we'll be having a shotgun wedding, and we can't even drive yet."

"Oh, Gods… And we need to find Miss Priss. Wonder who she was chasing?" Liz knows more about this than I do, apparently. I'm not supposed to be smart, just pretty.

"Didn't you see the shape?" she asked as we climbed out of the convenient hidey-hole. "It was smaller than she was."

"So we're dealing with a midget?"

"Idiot. We're _probably_ dealing with a male."

I blinked. "So?"

"So, what're the odds of a male and a female Yautja showing up _here_ at the same time almost? And that other woman-thing you like…"

"I told you, I don't like her!"

"Whatever." We found a table in the shade, and I got Cokes. "You know what? I think that the woman and that other male are here together, looking for K'ata."

"Um, she said that no one would come looking for her for like two hundred years," I said. "Maybe Earth is like the Florida of the universe, where all the aliens come on vacation."

Liz gave me the Look. Okay, right, I was very stupid, please don't hurt me.

"You're right, you know," a woman's voice said behind us. We both looked back, but there was nothing there. "Here," she said as she pulled a chair over to our table. It was the woman I fought, only now instead of the purple gown she wore slick leather, and her tail was wrapped closely around her thigh. She had long black hair, pulled back into a ponytail, and bright, leafy green eyes, rimmed with thick black lashes. Her human skin was milk white, and the other was dark blue-green. Along one arm there was what appeared to be a modified version of the shoulder cannon K'ata wore, and at her waist there was a whip-type thing. The rest of her bristled with knives.

Though we were both awestruck - well, she was pretty! - Liz spoke first. "Who's right?'

The woman laughed. It sent shivers down my spine. "You both are. But we have not been properly introduced, have we? I am Turi" - she pronounced it "TOO-ree" - "honorary member of the Ra'kesh clan, blooded and god-born. You are?"

"A rabid cabbage," Liz said. "Look, you can't have K'ata, we won't--"

"Let me?" she asked and laughed again. "I hardly think you could stop us if we wanted her. But worry not, for we are after" at this point she got a really nasty look to her, like a vulture who sees a dog cross the street "much _bigger_ game." Her expression became more pleasant, and she said, "I certainly hope Kou'al will restrain himself with your girl… She did start it, after all! Poor dear, not even blooded yet, it doesn't seem."

"Well then, why are you bothering us?" Liz asked, most inhospitably. She was noticing that my jaw was slack and I was still staring at Turi, I think.

"Oh, am I bothering you?" she asked. "Well, I suppose you'll just have to grin and bear it. Now, you were about to tell me your names." She used the tip of her tail to clean her very, very long, claw-like fingernails. My, my, this woman was a walking cliché, I remember thinking.

I stopped Liz, who was about to say something unpleasant. "I'm Morrick Lawrence Evans, son of Marie, um, Rachael Kinsey, daughter of my granny, whose name escapes me at the moment. This is Elizabeth Anne Warner, daughter of Lily Anne Anthony, daughter of Knits-Many-Hats. If we seem rude to you, we can't help it, she's an ignorant hillbilly."

"Excuse me!" Liz began, only to be glared into silence by me. (I sigh mentally as I wonder if I'm a bad future husband.)

Turi had listened to me with her head turned to one side, her eyes unblinking. Now she nodded. "At least one of you has some sense." She looked up over my head and a smile spread over her face. "I believe the children are back."

A deep male voice - right above me, for the love of Pie! - said, "I'm older than you, Spacemonkey."

"Yeah, but who still carries his blankie everywhere with him?" she said in a baby voice.

"It ain't a blanket, it's a mage's kit, and it isn't even mine. It there anywhere where we can de-cloak?" he asked curtly.

Turi's tail uncoiled and started whipping back and forth. "Very well, then, children, back to your hiding place, and no silliness either."

* * *

Meanwhile, orbiting Earth, the occupants of a large ship were watching this whole show via satellite. These people, call them the crew if you like, even though the never really do anything, consisted of a vampire in a Kull warrior suit, a cat-person, another genetically modified human female, a normal human female, a dragon-spliced man, and their pet rock. They have no significance whatsoever, but the author would like to let you know that you aren't the only one who's reading this. Cheers.

* * *

"That was very strange," I said. "Have we been eating mushrooms?" 

"I don't think so," Liz said.

"Another day in the life of Strange People, I suppose." I sighed and followed Turi back beneath the building.

The other two aliens de-cloaked, and I got a good look at this new fellow, Koala, or whatever his name is. His armor was a bit more silvery than K'ata's, and he was about half a foot shorter than her, but he made up for that with muscle. His hair jewelry was onyx or obsidian, some sort of black gem, and he wore the same as bracelets. They reminded me of the torques that Celtic chieftains wore back in the day. The backs of his hands were covered by three intertwined cobras, the two wrapping around the one.

K'ata seemed to be a bit worse for the wear, missing all of her weapons and a bit bruised-looking. They must've fought, and he won. Well, of course he won, he's older and more experienced, and trained, and…

"And just a better fighter than her, due to necessity," he said. Oh, great, another mind-reader. "Actually," he said as he drifted up to the ceiling as though gravity had taken a lunch break, stood on the ceiling, and made objects zoom haphazardly around the room, "I can do a bit more than read minds."

I looked to K'ata, and she shrugged and muttered "show-off" in a very fatigued tone.

Turi snapped at Whatsit, "What are we going to do about them?" and nodded obviously at us.

"Well, nothing," he said. "They can't hinder us, and I doubt they'd tell anyone. Their government would have them killed."

"Nuh-uh!" I said. "My dad works for the government. He's on the Air Force payroll."

"How nice. Turi, dear, do I hear a little hummer saying 'Take me hostage, won't you please?'?" he asked.

"But he doesn't like me that much," I said quickly.

"Hmm… Little hummer lies…"

"Do not! And why are you calling me a hummer?"

"You are like a hummingbird: small, annoying, and hyper."

"Well, you're a hippie," I said. "Oh, my gods, I am bantering wittily with a space alien."

"Groovy," he said. "I've been on Earth before you were even considered. Turi, they'll be fine, but we need to find our bounty."

"Yeah, yeah, the green thing, I know." She crawled out of the building.

"Return my weapons to me," K'ata growled. "Your mate is gone, and you will show me the respect I deserve. I outrank you."

He tossed her cannon to her and said, "A, she isn't my mate anymore, B, you deserve no respect, as you deserted your clan, and C, I'm not outranked by anyone, as I'm part of no Guild."

"This is gonna be fun," I said as I nudged Liz. The two Yautja looked at me like I'd just turned into a large spotted toad and was doing the Strip-tease Macarena. (I've actually done that.)

"Found him!" Turi yelled at us as she crashed through the very solid Styrofoam wall, half covered in green slime. She waved a thin green arm at Kou'al, and then we saw that there was a body attached to that. A very small, stumpy body, which made the arms look strangely elongated, and it had big, pointy ears.

"It it still alive?" Kou'al asked. Turi shook the thing and it emitted several loud, squirrel-like squeaks. "Good enough. You three, get over here." We did. "We're going for a little ride," he explained.

He typed something on that little computer of his, and several rings seemed to fall down around us. There was a very fuzzy feeling, almost like I was being tickled by thousands of small furry bunnies, and then I realized that I was giggling and staring at what must've been Australia from space. I sneezed. Stranger things had happened.

"Oh, really?" a small blonde woman said. She was wearing what I took to be a lab coat, and she had several very big needles handy in a thigh pocket.

"Eek!" I screamed, and hid behind K'ata. To my surprise, she grabbed me by the collar and deposited me on my knees in front of the needle-woman. I flashed K'ata a betrayed look, and then fainted at the sight of the other one pulling out an injector-thingy.

I woke up a few seconds later with a very sore elbow. Well, at least she knew where needles are supposed to go. It took me a moment to notice that I was in yet another room, and I was staring at a gaunt man with longish, scruffy black hair. It was strange, because I think I knew who he was, or is, or might be, but I couldn't think of his name…

Sirius Black.

Oh, crap, I'm doomed.

He snorted, and said, "Nice to meet you, too."

* * *

A/N: Aaaahh! Attack of the rabid plot bunnies! Well, I always kinda thought that the Veil or Arch or whatever was some messed up Stargate. So, I cannot resist. 

Also, sorry for not being as prompt as usual, my computer pulled a mutiny on me, and some people are very slow when it comes to informing me that things are fixed.

FlowersLilac: Thanks for reading. Love your work, btw. Yeah, I was worried that I'd get jumped or something, despite the whole living on different continents. I'm sure when he got drugged up he was very confused too.

Zappy: Claudia can't do anything, for fear that he'll leave something unpleasant, such as road kill, in her delicates drawer. Hehehe…

Jacob: Morrick has parents: they're just not very there. He's nearly fifteen, and Liz is fifteen, and K'ata is nineteen, although if she were human she'd be like ten or something. Thanks for reading, and please read more in the future.


	9. Lost in Space with Loonies

Disclaimer: I… own… NOTHING! Haha, fooled you again!

* * *

8. Lost in Space with Loonies

Liz considered herself to be a very levelheaded young lady. But this was just too much. Aliens, women with tails, green blobby squirrel people, and now this.

She was standing in the middle of a tree, literally inside the tree. Or was _she_ the tree? Frankly, she didn't know, and she didn't really want to either. She just wanted to get back to her own body and--

Where was her body? Was she dead? No, she felt distinctly alive, if a bit confused. The rings, the bright light… _Maybe I _am _dead,_ she thought with a stab of horror. _Oh, Morrick… Now you'll never survive…_

She felt a sharp pain at the back of her neck as she was pulled backward, through the tree, through the wall, _out through space,_ and into another ship. And then back into her own body, at last.

The other alien, Kou'al, stood over her and clucked like an old mother hen. "Can't have any astral projecting here, m'dea'. Very dangerous in space, you see, and you'll forget where your body is again."

"Any what?" she said, and then fainted.

* * *

"Speaking of, who is this serious black man you seem to think I am?" he asked me, popping his neck oddly. "I'm Roger Covenant, in case you didn't know. One of the world's greatest mages?"

Oh. So he wasn't Snuffles. Fine by me: Sirius always creeped me out a bit. "Um, Morrick Evans. Have we met?" He seemed… strange.

"Met? No, oh no, certainly not. We've never met. I've only tried to kill you several times." He propped his head on his hands. "You're very good at avoiding me. Why is that?"

"Um…" Oh, alright. They've locked me into a room with a crazy man. First off, I know who this guy is. He's known as the Darkmage, due to his dabbling with Avalon - the girl, not the Isle - and his inability to remember to shave. He's been struck by lightening a record forty seven times, and despite that, he's still alive. Why he's in space, I have no idea.

I went to what I thought was a door, and began scratching and howling crazily at it. "That won't do you any good. I know, I've tried. I've tried everything."

"Yes, well, I'm pretty, so I've got advantages you don't."

"That's it!" he cried, eyes ablaze. Literally, he was on fire. I mean it, he'd actually caught fire, and he didn't seem bothered by this at all. "That's how you evade me, your prettiness clouds me gaze, and I can't find you. Brilliant!"

"Uh huh, is there any way out of here, wise guy, 'cause if there ain't, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to sic the evil side on you." See, see, I'm good at false bravado.

His fires imploded on him. Not pretty. "Little boy, you have no idea of what I'm capable of."

"Yeah, and you have no idea how many Madonna songs I have memorized," I said. He went pale and made a gagging noise.

"M- M- Madonna?" he asked. "You- you wouldn't d- dare."

"Papa don't preach--"

"NOOO!" he screamed. "The off key-ness! Argh, it hurts!"

"Let me out. I'll stop singing," I said.

He ran at the door thing and crashed into it. It caved, and he rushed it again, knocking it down this time. I stepped daintily over his prone form, and said, "Well, nice to meet you. Bye."

The small blonde woman who used the needle on me last time was waiting in the corridor. "Ah, I see I won't be needing to sedate him after all. Good. If you'll follow me?" She grabbed my arm and dragged me with her.

"No more needles!"

"What? Oh, yes, your partner informed me that you've been given all the necessary inoculations, so no, no more needles." She looked up at me with a suspicious expression. "You do remember this, don't you?"

"Er, probably. She's as fond of needles as you are."

She smiled. Yay. "I doubt that. We have a more pressing issue, however. We've lost your Earth."

I blinked. "You, er, _lost_ the Earth?" I tried to turn my laugh into a hacking cough, but it didn't work. "I'm sorry," I said as she glared at me, "but it is kinda funny if you look at it from my point of view."

"Yes, well. We need you to find your correct Earth and Time, and not just because you need to be returned." She closed her eyes and sighed. "I do beg your pardon. I've already started giving you orders, and I don't even know your name. I'm Dr. Aeryole Galintha. And you?"

"Mr. Morrick Evans, Hobbit at large."

"O…kay. Nice oxymoron action." She pushed me down into a chair-thing. You know, the usual dealy with lots of wires and prongs to poke me with. "Now, I'm just going to hook you up to this nice little machine, and you're going to scan the Universes for your Earth, and when you find some that fit your criteria, I'll unlock the Time function."

"Has anyone ever died in this thing?" I asked slowly.

"I… I'm not at liberty to discuss it."

"Let me out."

"Can't. Sorry. Now, lets get to work."

"Mother."

* * *

K'ata surveyed their trophy room with a mix of envy and revulsion. Rather than taking just bones or teeth or recognized things like that, they appeared to have ripped off random bits and preserved them in jars. Badly drawn Crayon sketches of battles decorated the few spaces not filled with jars. Foreign bloodstained weapons were strewn haphazardly on the floor and in corners.

"Nevertheless, it's pretty full," Mart'am, the child they had _adopted_ - their word for killed his parents and stolen - said cheerfully. He wasn't suffering, but not benefiting from their care, if you could call it that. Respect for ones elders seemed to be a lost concept to him. For now, until they went back to Earth, she had to look after the miniature Yautja. She'd be lucky if she didn't kill him before then.

"Shut up, midget," she said, imitating Morrick's treatment of his sister.

"Hey, I'm not a midget!" he said, outraged. "I can beat you at fighting," he boasted. "I'm a wizard."

"Ha, I could beat you in combat with a thought, midget," she said.

"I am not-- Hey, why are we speaking English?"

"Because, I like it better than the jumped-up indigestion sounds we call a language." She examined one particularly nauseating specimen: a bony, black hand with razor-sharp claws a foot long. The green blood on those still glowed.

"Gave Kou'al a lot of trouble, he did. He was an Amnion scientist," Mart'am explained, seeing her questioning look. "Kou'al went to retrieve him, and he brought Turi back with him as well. Something about her saving his life, or some such." He clicked, annoyed. "They won't tell me, of course. I have to hack into their logs to get what really happened, and they didn't even write it there."

"Mmhmm. Yes, that's nice. When are we going back to Earth, midget?" He was getting on her nerves.

"I dunno. And I ain't a midget."

"Yes, you are, midget."

He roared a very laughable roar and stalked off. "Bye bye, midget!" K'ata said and waved farewell to him. Maybe he'd eject himself into space. She, in the meantime, was going to take a nap.

* * *

"Wake up, lazy human," Liz heard as she was poked in the ribs. It was that woman, Turi. "Gerrup," she said.

_Why bother?_ she wondered. _There's no point._

"Ack, it hasn't even been a day yet and you're already despairing? Lord Foul would _love_ you," she said gloomily. She placed a glass of some warm, blue drink in Liz's hands. "Drink that."

"Poison?" she asked hopefully.

"Not quite. It'll keep you from fainting any more, so that's good." She nodded as Liz drank. It was tasteless, like hospital Jell-O.

"Where's Morrick? And K'ata?" Liz asked, fully aware now.

"We can dance, we can dance, everything's out of control," she sang, unhelpfully. "Yes, the safety dance." She spun about the room on her toes.

"Great. I'm in another mental asylum," Liz said.

"No, ya ain't. Asylums have padded walls. We got metal," she said, butchering the language. "You call that butchering? I ain't done did no butchering yet."

"You're from the ghetto, aren't you? I swear, I've heard you on the radio… Thomson, right?"

She stopped spinning. "How'd you know that?"

"My god, I live near an alien. I'm from Raydenville, you know, out near the lakes?"

"Those crazy home-schooled kids? Yeah, you look the type. Are y'all really a cult?" she asked, seeming interested but probably not.

"Some of us. The Poundses are Catholic."

"Hmph. Same difference. And are you the ones who leave disemboweled sheep carcasses in the woods?"

"Er. The fake sheep, yeah."

"No, the real ones." Liz shook her head. "Hmm. I think I have another bounty on my hands. Don't worry, we probably won't blow anything up," she said as Liz objected.

"I wanna see Morrick."

"What, I bore you? Oh, very well, we'll go see your little pet."

* * *

The staggering variety of the Earths surprised me. Not only did I have to find my Earth, I had to find my Time as well. And the Earths differed from each Time to the next. And then when I thought I'd found my Time, the Earth changed abruptly. Al Gore was the president, and Bush was an Iranian dictator. You _know_ I ain't staying there! And the good little doctor's constant murmuring was hardly a help.

"Now, I'm sure we've found it. Yes, see, I'm sure that's Australia there."

"Australia isn't pink, nor does it look like a kangaroo. Will you please just shut up for a few minutes? How do you expect me to find my planet with you telling me about all this other nonsense?"

"Well, I don't know. I'm Alturian."

"Shut up! I think I almost had it."

"Did it have four main continents?"

"Shut. Up. Mine has seven. Look, maybe we can narrow it down to just one galaxy? You know, mine is the Milky Way, there are others…"

"Uh, yeah, that's what we've been doing. We're in your Milky Way galaxy."

"Wow. It's… big."

"Uh huh. Now you know why everyone else calls this thing "the Devil Chair".

"Out. Out, I want out now, please."

"Aw, man, I ain't that bad," the chair said. "Say, you feel like sacrificing any chickens on me?"

"Mommy."

Dr. Galintha yawned. "I think we need a break. This thing doesn't normally talk if we're alert. It's sneaky, you see."

"Good. Please let me out."

"Mmm… Chicken, oh yeah…"

* * *

K'ata was close to killing Mart'am. Annoying little git. He was making strange noises, and they weren't remotely like what children normally sounded like. Not only that, but he was on the ceiling.

"Come down, now," K'ata ordered evenly.

"Nope. You didn't respect this dangerous wizard, so now he's mad." He laughed and pointed a stick at her. "Behold, the wand, the instrument of destruction that _you_, insignificant female that you are, do not possess."

"Yes, nice twig. Now, come down before I come up there and harm you." She didn't like the slur to her significance, but that paled in comparison to the insult of her gender. The little brat would be punished, that much was certain. Nails and a cross would be involved. And a spear. She growled happily as she imagined the screams of fear and pain…

"Never, never shall I come down!"

"Oh, and how do you plan to eat? Salvage bologna from the ceilings?"

"Why yes, in fact-- What's bologna?" he asked.

"Oh, something I'm _sure_ you wouldn't like, especially if I told you what was in it."

He dropped down a few inches, hovering. "What's in it?" he asked, showing his childish curiosity.

"Processed… something. I'll tell you if you're standing on the floor."

He thought it over. She could practically see the little hamster running on its wheel in his head. (Morrick had taken her to Alvin's house, where the walls were nearly covered by the hamster cages. A strange experience, to be sure.)

Mart'am fell off the ceiling onto the floor with a dull thud. K'ata would've pounced then, but the doors whooshed open and revealed Turi and a very jittery Liz.

"Hi. Caffeine. Very. Awake," was the limit of her communicative abilities.

"Oh, come off it, I didn't put that much in it. 'Sides, if there was anything really wrong with you, Leira, our AI, would tell us, wouldn't you, Leira?" Turi waited a moment.

"We are sorry, but the Leira Artificial Intelligence System is currently offline, making minor repairs. We will return…" and a series of dates and seemingly random numbers followed.

Turi looked over at Liz. "Er, oops." She returned her attention to K'ata and said, "We're going to see Morrick. Wanna come with?"

"Yes," K'ata said. "Need we bring him?" she asked and pointed to Mart'am.

"Yes, we need to bring me. And you have to tell me what bologna is."

"She'll tell you what bologna is if you get rid of that dirty little stick," Turi told him. Evidently, she was regretting letting him live.

He made a very rude face and returned to the ceiling. "It is not a stick, a twig, or a shish kabob skewer. It is a wand, and I can do deadly magic with it."

Turi put her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead, and then pointed at him. "Don't tell him what bologna is, then. C'mon, Morrick's probably dead by now. We left him on the Med Deck with Doc G," she explained. And off they went.

* * *

"E six." Kou'al and the guy in the Kull warrior suit were playing Battleship.

"How dare you sink my battleship!" He had a vaguely Italian accent.

"Hey, war's war. Get over it."

"Fine. G nine."

"Haha, loser."

"Bother."

"C seven."

The Kull guy, who we'll call Tino, even though he has no name, stared blankly at the screen. "I've been beaten by a man with less wit than a gym sock."

"Oh, and how do you know how much wit a gym sock has?" Kou'al asked as he got up and turned off his screen. "Look, we've done this fourteen times in a row, and you've lost every time. Don't you know not to play with anyone with telepathy?"

"You-- That has to be in the rules somewhere."

"It ain't. The makers of these games don't believe in telepathy."

"Hmph. Idiots."

"More so than you'd think."

"I was referring to you people."

"Ah. Hey, do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Stuff your head in the engines."

The intercom bleeped. "Commanders Kou'al and Diablo?"

"Huh? Oh, that's me. Yes?" Tino asked.

"Yes, Ensign?" Kou'al was always a bit more formal with junior officers. Gave a better impression, it did.

"Sirs, there is another ship approaching our position." The girl paused as if wondering how to state her message. "It appears to be one of the Gou'ald vessels we destroyed two weeks ago."

"One of Siva's?" Commander Tino asked.

"The very same. Sirs, Commander Saka asks permission to arm the cannons."

"No, you idiot cat, don't arm anything." This was Kou'al. "We can take prisoners. Information, you know," he said as Tino looked at him oddly. Hey, Tino was into the slave trade, not him. "We'll gut it for weapons, how's that for a reason?"

"Yes, sir. Commander Saka says you're a dodgy old git."

"Tell her she's a fur-brained amphibian spawn," he said fondly.

He then heard a lot of exclaiming and cursing and thumping. Poor girl.

The doors spun open and Dr. Galintha entered with a cross look on her face. "You're on ship-wide, boyo. My, er, patient is currently cowering in the corridor talking about 'voices' and 'big people' coming to get him."

Tino retreated hastily. Rows between the two main leaders of their little armada were _not_ enjoyable, especially when the sanity of patients was involved.

"Well, that's what you get for putting him in the Devil Chair." Kou'al shuddered and growled empathetically. "Does strange things to people, that."

"_You_ helped steal the designs and _you_ helped jury-rig it, so don't go blaming _me_ for when _your_ little pets get caught in the wiring!" she said. "And, as I remember it, it was _your_ bright idea that gave us the need for it anyway, and stranded _me_ on this ship _you_ acquired, as you call it, illegally."

By this time, Kou'al was backed against the wall. "Um… Pie?"

"You! I should…" She lost her train of thought as pie took over. "What kind?" she asked suspiciously.

"Any kind you wish, m'dea, any you wish," he said, clucking evilly.

* * *

Oh. So, this doctor lady has the mystical pie fetish too, eh? I'll be needing that knowledge later, I'm sure. The offer of pie had diminished my fear of giant flesh-eating chairs, and I walked calmly along with them and listened as Kou'al lulled Dr. Galintha into a false sense of security with his decorative pie descriptions. Well, he was lulling me into a false sense of security too. It's odd how I know it's false, but that doesn't bother me. Maybe I should've been a blonde.

I tried to ignore the scraping sounds I heard above me, the ones that sounded almost like a chair being dragged - or, dare I say, _dragging itself_ - across the floor. I also tried to ignore the mad calls that sounded suspiciously like "Gimme chicken! Gimme chicken!"

Their kitchen-y place was huge. And it was a technological marvel too, with all its computer operated microwaves and toasters. I had fun with cake mix and a very aggressive waffle iron.

Reclining in a fluffy, stain-proof chair, I watched the other two pig out. K'ata must just be weird, because there wasn't anything odd about Kou'al's eating habits, except maybe that he would hold a piece of pie with his mandibles and talk and gesture wildly as he ate. (You know, everyone in this story except me is a ham. Odd, eh?) And Evil Doctor Lady must have a really good metabolism, because I think she ate more than him.

The doors opened, and everyone else - Turi, Liz, K'ata, and a strange little Yautja midget (What? He was only half as tall as K'ata; he looked like a midget next to her.) with a stick - entered. "Lovely," said Turi. "Now, will we be rid of these Earthies soon? Because Commander Saka informed me that we have a potentially valuable ship to gut."

Kou'al groaned. "Just like her to go around me to you. Alright, alright," he said as she began denying that. "Aeryole, have you found their planet?"

"Not yet, but we're close." She looked over at me and asked, "Aren't we?"

"I'm not getting back into that thing. I ain't. It's gonna eat me!" I said by way of an explanation. "I don't wanna be some chair's din-din!"

Liz snickered. "Are ya scared, Ricky?"

I glared at her through narrowed eyes. "Why no, Lucy, I'm not scared. I'm terrified!"

"Aw, poor wittle Wicky is scared," she said, laughing. Okay, they'd been messing with her brain or something.

Doctor Lady thought so too. "Kou'al, that sounds strangely like a Wraith."

"Oh, gods, I can't deal with this," he moaned. "Why, why is it that you people are all so… _weird_? What gods of happenstance, coincidence, and conspiracy brought you together, and which of them pulled _me_ into it?" He put his head on the table and morosely said, "Kou'al is not here right now. He's vacationing in the Caribbean, and he won't be back until someone else deals with this. Don't leave a message, it's futile."

Turi glared at him, and then looked over at Liz, who was beginning to look a bit like the girl from _The Exorcist_. Liz gave a gurgling laugh and began trying to climb the wall. "Okay," Turi said slowly. "We need to get rid of you people. You too," she said to K'ata. "You, boy, are going to do whatever Dr. Galintha says, no matter how demeaning and debasing you may think it is. She's older _and_ smarter than you."

"Thanks everso, Commander," she said.

"It's true," she said with a shrug. "Commander Diablo?"

The loudspeakers crackled to life as he answered hesitantly, "Yes?"

"We have a Wraith-possessed girl that we need you to restrain for a while. Get down here immediate--" She stopped as the doors slid open and revealed the tall guy in the freaky suit.

"I was listening next door," he confessed.

"Well, you know what's to be done then. Hop to!" she yelled as he gave her a reluctant look.

"Aye aye, _Madame_. No need to snap my head off."

"C'mon," Dr. Galintha said. "We're not going to hear anything more pertaining to us." And again I was dragged back to the Devil Chair's room. I like to think I made a very profound statement by clinging to the doorframe for dear life.

* * *

"What in the world… Oi, my head," Roger Covenant groaned. He popped his neck and looked around blearily. The first thing that registered coherently in his jumbled head was that there was a piece of wall missing.

_It's a door, you imbecile,_ said a voice. _You go through it and escape._

Escape. That too registered, but not coherently. He didn't know why it sounded like such a good idea, but the Voice was not to be refused.

_Get the others_.

What others? Oh, the boy and the two females. Yes, they would do. Do for what? Summoning the Lord of Lions, he thought.

_You idiot, you're a Covenant, not a Brisby. You're going to kill the boy, and then you're going to use his blood to remake the Sunbane, which I will then feed off of and regain my strength. Is that at all confusing to you?_

Yes. But alright, he would comply. He would serve his master, Lord Foul, the Despiser.

_Now you're getting it. Get to it._

_

* * *

_

A/N: Okay, I know I'm a bit of an idiot, but I've found a hobby, and I plan to force it upon, well, everyone. Ha.


	10. Yay, Earth

A/N: I own nothing, so don't sue me, you won't get anything.

9. Yay, Earth

* * *

"Let go of me, you crazy woman!" I yelled loudly. Despite her smallness, Dr. Galintha was strong. At the moment, she was holding me down on the Devil Chair, attempting to fix the straps.

"Mmm… Chicken…" it muttered, prompting a new round of screams from me. "You know, in the good old days, people used to sacrifice fifty chickens and a virgin on me every Tuesday. Now, I'm lucky if someone accidentally sits on me…"

"Mr. Evans, you must calm down." Dr. G was calm, so calm, in fact, that if she was any calmer, she'd be clinically dead. "The chair won't eat you." She addressed the chair. "It won't eat you because it knows that I have the schematics of its design, and I can scrap it with impunity and build a new, non-possessed chair. Isn't that right?"

For once in its life, the Devil Chair was silent. "Now, Morrick, sit," she said softly. I don't know, she's too blonde to trust completely, but I sat anyway.

"Now, we need to narrow the search. How many planets revolve around your sun?"

"Um…" Strange, how you learn something and when you need it you can't remember it. "Nine."

"Okay… Which one from the sun is yours?"

"Third rock from the sun."

"Mmhmm… Only inhabited one in the system?"

"Yep."

"Okay… Oxygen based atmosphere… Seven continents… Three fourths of the surface covered in water?"

"Uh huh." This is surprisingly non-exciting business. I might take a nap.

"Found it. Now, the Time… You're going to have to--"

"Go in, yes, I know. Just do it." Just get it over with… I hate space, now. Thank you ever so much.

I found myself staring at cavemen. "Another thousand years, please." Peasants. "More." Peasants. "More." People building a pyramid. "I think we're on the wrong continent," I said boredly. We switched back to the Earth from space.

"Point to your approximate locale."

"Talk like a normal person," I said as I pointed to the Georgia-South Carolina border. Trees popped up on the screen, and a deer ran by. "More years." Wow. That's better. "About fifty more years." And eureka! there was a truck stop. "We have it. Let me just find the Fair…" It was like a camera was slowly being lifted up and out. Okay, there it was, but no one was in it. I found Saturday, and scrutinized that one building for the longest time until I realized that it was the wrong Saturday.

"Great, more work," Dr. G said glumly. "I'm getting coffee. Want some?"

"Black with sugar, no cream, thanks."

* * *

Meanwhile, Commander Tino Diablo was back in the Game Annex with Liz. He scrutinized the board carefully and said, "B thirteen."

"Nope."

He cursed in Italian, which made her giggle. "Fine, how're you going to ruin my day now?"

"Hmm… E nine."

Im-bloody-possible. "Evil child," he muttered.

"You have no idea."

He growled. "N seventeen."

"Ha, you sank my _tugboat_."

He shrugged and said, "At least I sank something."

"Bah, G nine."

"You got nothin'," he said cheerily. "L twelve."

"And you got another tugboat. Loser."

"I'll get lucky one day," he said wistfully.

"Whatever. H seven."

"Nope, J eighteen."

"Three in a row, you tugboat serial killer."

He was about to retort when the doors whooshed open to reveal--

"Commander Saka," he growled. "I'd salute you, but I don't want to."

The woman resembled an overgrown cat with a few human characteristics, such as hands and the ability to walk upright. She hissed at him and said something very rude indeed, pertaining to the fact that he was a vampire.

"At least I bathe like a decent person."

"You bathe?" she asked incredulously. "I would've never known."

"Flea bag."

"Rat petter."

"At least I don't eat them."

"Neither do I, after you pet them."

As you can see, they don't like each other very much. It had to do with a long series of pranks involving paper cuts, lemons, penguins, and limburger cheese. But all this meant nothing because Morrick had found Earth and was doing a celebratory touchdown dance.

* * *

"Whew," I said after I kneeled to the ground and kissed it. Well, you would too, if you'd spent all that time in the Devil Chair. "If I ever say I wanna see space, beat me. Hard."

"But darling, I do that already," said Liz, who was, luckily, back to normal. "And that's what astronauts are for."

K'ata made a strange sound. It took me a moment to realize that this must be what an alien giggle sounds like. "Your astronauts are completely useless. A score of my people could board one of their stations, and they would never know anything was amiss. They're oblivious to what isn't looking them straight in the face."

"Well, we've already established that we're the inferior race here, but go ahead, rub it in some more," I said cheerfully. I'm very well-adjusted, and I adapt well to change. Maybe this is why my I.Q. is higher than normal. Heh.

"I was about to, but you seem to be using sarcasm again," K'ata said as she shrugged gloomily.

Alvin and Sam saw us and fell upon us, showering us with hugs and questions that I let Liz answer, simply because I'm too lazy to do anything but recline in my wrought iron chair. K'ata didn't like being preened by Sam, but the alien let the medieval hooker tidy her dreads. (Sam is a bit bird-brained. It might have been the shiny things that caught her attention, too.) Alvin listened to Liz's description of the Devil Chair and Commander Diablo, both of which she messed up, as the chair was bigger and he wasn't _that_ cute.

"You've been to space?" Tim asked us as we headed back home. He and Alvin were the only licensed drivers, so, obviously, we use them as chauffeurs. Alvin had taken Liz and Sam with him and left me and K'ata with Mr. I-drive-a-black-FBI-van-at-eighty-miles-an-hour-in-broad-daylight over here.

"Yes, Tim, and if you hadn't been so busy looking up a barmaid's skirt, you could've come with us," I replied scathingly.

"That was accidental," he replied coolly. "She tricked me."

"She tricked you into lying down under the counter while no one was looking and using a mirror on the floor to--"

"Really, this is unnecessary," K'ata groaned. "And could you please slow down?"

"Um, why?"

"Because, if you don't, I'll castrate you."

Tim slowed to forty. "Better?"

"Much, thank you."

"The mighty space alien can't take Tim's driving?" I said to no one in particular. "Tim, I'm telling your dad, if I ever meet him."

Tim chuckled darkly. "Oh, yes, fat chance of that ever happening. Tell Mimi," who was, in case you didn't know, Tim's grandmother. "She might just believe you."

I shivered. Mimi was a vampire, an evil, terrible, cookie-baking vampire. "I demand to be armed with a crucifix."

"You think a crucifix would do any good against a Catholic vampire? You're daft. You'd need a Star of David." He rummaged through the glove compartment and tossed me a gold one on a gold chain. "Keep that handy, will you? I may need it back if Mimi converts again."

"Gee, thanks Tim," I said smarmily. "Say, when'll we be seeing your Granny?"

"At her next funeral rehearsal, I suspect. Father still hasn't shown up to any of them, and she intends to stay alive and keep trying until he does. It's Wednesday at four. I'll pick you two up at three, as the thing's in Dearing this time."

"Who said I wanted to go?" K'ata asked woefully. I don't think there are cars - as we know them - where she comes from. Hovering things, yes, but the concept of the wheel is beyond her grasp.

"Ah, come on, it's great fun," Tim admonished gently. "Liquor, heavy metal, people in black keening and ripping their hair out, what's not to love?"

K'ata thought for a moment. "You are all crazy. I've taken up residence in a town full of crazies."

"Yep," Tim and I said together. I returned the funny look he gave me.

* * *

Claudia and Mom were both home. That in itself bothered me, because the mother woman was usually at work whenever Cloudy was here. I adjusted my hat and strode forth bravely into the eye of the storm. The two of them were sitting on the couch with worried looks on their faces. A large pile of stuff - mine, if I judged the lace and ruffles correctly - was situated between them. _Cosmo_ magazines, nail polish, hair straightener, ribbons… Well, at least they didn't find my maid outfit.

"Morrick, honey, we need to talk," my mother said gently. The lines on her face seemed to have deepened since I'd last seen her, and the blue of her eyes looked a bit washed out. "I understand that you may be having a bit of a rough time without your father here, but--"

"Aren't you going to let me explain anything?" I asked blandly.

"No she's not!" Cloudy burst out loudly. "You, you little snake-tongued devil, won't be explaining anything."

"Says the woman who's had eight abortions in three years, and not told her mother about any of them," I said even more blandly. Yes, I've read her diary, disgusting mess that it is.

Claudia's voice seemed to fail her as she mouthed false accusations at me. Mom looked from me to her and back to me again. "Morrick?"

"Yes?"

She sighed. "I knew about the abortions. She had them at my hospital, for the love of God. Your sister isn't as bright as she thinks."

I smirked knowingly. "But, Morrick, this" she gestured to the stuff "this isn't right. You're nearly fifteen, and I understand that you might be feeling--"

"Mother, I'm gay." Not really, but at least it shut her up. "Kidding, but I like to feel pretty. No, I'm not on drugs, and no, I'm not being a prostitute. I like to take care of myself, so just chill out."

She looked over at Claudia, who was now crying silently. She ran up to her room, slammed the door, and began sobbing loudly. Mother looked at me. "And Liz?"

"Well, I'm marrying her. She's my girlfriend and my betrothed."

"Morrick, you're free to marry whoever you want, and you don't need to go by her family's recommendations, either."

"I know, Mum."

"And I was thinking about putting you into a regular school this year."

I blinked owlishly for a moment. Then I said, "Mother, that's a very daft thought. You know that public schools are filled with germs, and my education will suffer terribly."

"Morrick, I'm worried about your life! You're just… not right. You're strange."

"So was Bill Gates," I said insipidly.

"You aren't Bill Gates! And you aren't acting like a normal child! Normal children don't do this," she said as she gestured to a pink and orange feather boa. The futility of our conversation was settling on her, like a plastic bag over the head of an infant.

"Have you ever considered that I might not be meant to be normal?" I asked gently. "I'm not." Breezily, I told her, "There are a lot of things you don't know, Mother, and it's probably best if I don't enlighten you just yet. Everything is fine, though, so you needn't worry."

She was silent for a moment. A very long moment, during which time the silence became pregnant with suspense. "Your father and the General are visiting next week. Please make an attempt not to be so eccentric in front of them." And then she left. Literally. She went out to her car, got in it, and drove off. Mother always was a dickybird.

Wait. Rewind. My dad was coming home! Now, that is a momentous thing, here. And, the General was coming with him. I'd only met General O'Neill once, when I was eleven, but I liked him straight off: he was, if this is even possible, stranger than me. Liz and I looked him up on the 'Net, and she fawned over him because… Well, let's just say that it didn't make me very happy.

Abstractly, my mind was already formulating what I'd wear.

"Who is this 'General' your mother speaks of?" K'ata asked from the doorway, pulling me from my internal color swatches.

"Oh, er, Dad's boss, I guess. He's weird and funny." I was imagining how well a claret red dress shirt would go with my black bellbottoms. Very ABBA, I thought, but I am a dancing queen. (If you don't get that pun, shame upon you.)

"Well, I doubt that this is going to turn out well. What if they see me?" Whoa, was she actually whining? Hmm, no, just a different version of the rolling growl, I guessed.

"What, are you serious? Dad may believe that there's life 'out there', but they're both military. Daft as brushes, the lot of them." I snorted disdainfully. "Plus, the General doesn't seem very bright."

"So, they won't believe their eyes if they see me?" she asked. She sounded a bit annoyed by this, as if by not believing in her they were insulting her. She shook her head and muttered, "You humans really are stupid."

"Yep."

* * *

I sat in my room, morosely contemplating my book collection. Most of them were from a female point of view, and most of those were set in Europe in the eighties. The few - and I stress _few_ - that weren't like that were, well, _Harry Potter_ and _The Lord of the Rings_. And that one with the gay vampire, but we're not supposed to speak of that. Oh, wait, Harry's British, and so are the Hobbits. Almost. Ah, screw it.

I wondered briefly what being female might be like, and discarded the notion almost immediately. Liz had told me all the woes of being a gal, and I wasn't about to have that. I guess I'm just a drag queen, then.

"That you are," K'ata said cheerfully. "I sent Kou'al and Turi the video of you in the dress."

"I hope I never see them again," I said crossly. Memo to self, destroy all copies of that video.

She laughed and said, "But you don't even know how my computer works."

Fine. Memo to self, learn how her computer works.

I heard a knock at my door, and my mother's voice asked, "Morrick, are you in there?"

"Crap," I muttered. "Great, all I need is another touching heart-to-heart. Hide, will ya?" I said to K'ata. But she was already invisible, and the lights were dimmed so I could better enjoy my multiple lava lamps and fiber optic things. "Come in, Mother."

She looked awful. Tears and booze had clouded her visage, and her makeup was ruined. But these things didn't matter to her at the moment, because in her arms she held a spotted black and white lump which was whimpering weakly. One of the poodles, I recognized. "Mum, what's wrong?"

"Morrick," she whispered thinly, "I think he's dying."

"Oh, Mom…"

"I can't-" Her voice broke. "Can't watch him die."

Oh, so you want me to do it? I sighed. Jerry, the poodle she held, was older than me, and he'd lived a full life. "Give him here, Mom," I said, to be awarded with a grateful look from her. She gently put the towel-wrapped dog into my arms. As she left, she shut the door quietly.

K'ata shimmered back into view and joined me on my trampoline bed. I answered her mute question with a nod, and she stroked Jerry's wiry fur delicately. "He was a good dog, even if he was a bit senile at times," I said sadly. I was angry at my mother for making me keep the dying dog company as he died, but I wasn't as grieved as the two women were. My dog was in the yard, eating mushrooms and chasing rabbits that weren't there. The poodles didn't matter to me.

"He's stopped breathing, Morrick." She examined her claws; we'd been playing with Liz's nail polish a few days ago, and K'ata let me paint her nails metallic green. I guess that is to her what red is to us.

"I'll have to bury him, I guess," I said, wondering if I might cremate him. The Cantonese people would flock, though. I put him in his cardboard coffin with all of his favorite toys, and left him by the door. It was too late to go out now.

It was time for me to check my emails. Normally, all I get is junk, but occasionally, there'd be something neat in there. There was only one, and it read like this:

_To Morrick L. Evans,_

_Hi. I'm fairly sure you don't remember me, but you might, by now. I understand that you've made the acquaintance of a female Yautja from the Pran'rel clan, and you have recovered at least some of your memory. You have also lost the tracking nanytes that I implanted in you. This displeases me greatly, as you are an ongoing experiment of mine, one of my favorites. (You remind me of me that one time when I was young, human, and not very bright. That's a compliment.) It is necessary that you receive new tracking nanytes immediately. If you do not cooperate, you will be eliminated._

_Yours sincerely, Lord and Master of the Universe, Baal_

_P.S.- Your Yautja friend need not accompany you into the woods west of your residence._

"What a loser," I said cheerfully. "Hey, K'ata, look at this." I showed her the email, and she didn't think it was funny in the least bit. In fact, somehow she convinced me to panic.

"I doubt he will follow through with his threats," K'ata lied obviously. "I mean, usually, he does, but not always. Like, once, he announced to a planet that he was going to demolish it, but then he didn't. I think he forgot," she added, troubled.

"I'm gonna die," I said hysterically.

"Ya ain't. I've met him. He's quite nice," she said.

"Yeah, and nice to you is evil to me."

"Well, that's what I meant."

I stared at the screen. The from address was a variation of Sam's. I told K'ata that, and I don't think she got it.

"I'm off to, er, check my messages," she said as she went outside. Great, she's using my excuses.

"'One of his favorites,'" I read with a certain sense of foreboding. "How many people have been experimenting on me, anyway?"

"Oh, lots," said a very annoying little voice in my head. "In fact, you're like the universal guinea pig."

"Shu' 'p." Maybe Sam might know something. I sent her the email, and shortly received a reply back as follows:

_Morrick,_

_I dunno who sent u that. I didn't. Mayb u've got a haxer. Sry I can't b of help,_

_Sammy Kool Dawg_

Yes. My friends are retarded. But, I'm distracted my this cute hoodie that I see in the MSN ad. I don't know, is lilac really my color though? I'll ask K'ata, when she gets back. Meanwhile, I played Solitare while listening to Marylin Manson.

I didn't notice as K'ata crept into the room. Well, I did, but I didn't let her know that. A guy needs a few secrets, don't ya think? So, I ignored her as she went about setting up a strange device which glowed faintly. Ah, forget it. Curiosity won out, and I spun about in my chair and said, "Whatcha got?" in the scalliest voice I could. (A scally is a British redneck, I think. If I got that wrong, well, it doesn't matter, because Alvin is the only Brit I know.)

"You wouldn't understand it," she said dismissively.

"Try me."

"Very well. This is a field generator. It can do almost any field I program into it. I'm going scramble any scanners that sweep us, mainly, _Dark Glory's_ and any of Baal's ships." She sounded very satisfied, like a vintage car collector. (Don't ask, you don't want to know what I've been reading.)

"Um, who's _Dark Glory_?"

"Turi and Kou'al. They have shields up so I can't scan them, and I'm just returning the favor."

Right. Was it just me, or is all this scanning nonsense very childish? Of course it's just me. "Is this thingy gonna mess up my computer?"

"Dunno. We'll see… now." She flipped a switch and looked around expectantly. My screen now had a very flattering greenish tint, but that was it. I applauded.

"But, er, why are we blocking their scans anyway?"

"Several reasons, none of which you'd get."

"I got the generator dealy, didn't I?" I asked petulantly.

She sighed and said, "Field generator. Fine. One, Baal uses fine-tuned scanners to determine where to beam to. If we mess that up, he might beam into a wall, and that would be a good thing."

"I thought you said he was nice."

"What have we discussed?" Oh, that. Oops. "Anyway, he's also been scanning you, and I'm not sure about this, but he might be able to beam nanytes into you." Ew. Suddenly, technology frightens me. "Depending on the type, the other nanytes you have would destroy the new nanytes, but they might not."

"Anything else?"

"No, that's it."

"Right. Lovely. I'm getting some pie." She made a gagging noise.

"Don't see how you can eat that stuff."

I smirked and said, "You're just addicted to injections."

"Indeed."

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the extreme slowness in updating. My muse has been having an affair. So, anyone recognize Baal from _Stargate_? I can't help it. The plot bunnies forced me to do it. Somehow, they've put it into my mind that Sam (Lemley) is supposed to marry him after Morrick, Liz, and Alvin leave with K'ata and the rest of the aliens. (And I'm left thinking, when did this happen?) And, this is dedicated to the death of one of my friend's dogs. 


	11. We Be Grilling

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognize. _Stargate, Predator, Alien, _and miscellaneous references all belong to other people. (And if any of these other people want to sign over their rights to me, well, I'll happily accept.) Also, if anything you read in my writing is offensive to you, look away quickly. After all, no one is holding a shotgun to your head and forcing you to read aloud to an assembly of first graders. (I hope.) That being said, begin title credits.

10. We Be Grilling

It was roughly six o'clock when they arrived. They were dressed informally, but their very walks suggested great power and importance. Wait a moment. Why am I talking like a Bronte novel?

My father and General O'Neill were dressed casually. We all were. Well, as casually as you can be when having a General over. I think the most relaxed thing my mother wore was her _Kiss the Cook_ apron. Me, now, I'm smart. I wore an ironic t-shirt. (Picture of a pig with _Eat pork or die_ written in Arabic. Offensive, yes, but the piggy is just so cute… I mean tasty.) I was the very epitome of relaxation in my ragged jeans and toe socks. And gum. I was craving gum for some reason; don't remember why now.

They wore jeans and t-shirts too, which made me feel a good deal better. I was surprised that the General would wear sneakers, but I guess he's human too. We made ourselves comfortable in the living room while Mom fussed over things that were going perfectly fine without her fussing in the kitchen. Claudia and the General's girlfriend, Samantha Carter, (Isn't that cool? Another Sam.) chatted at the table, skillfully avoiding my mother as she moved things. (My mother's way of cooking and mine differ substantially, but I don't dare complain, lest I be recruited.)

"So," my father said, "have you done anything revolutionary since I last saw you? Besides make your hair bigger?"

I was tempted to tell him about K'ata, as I'd probably be tempted to all night, but I refrained. His words, I realize, look cruel on this screen, but they were meant to be kind, teasing even. "Liz and I are getting married," I said blandly.

The General, who asked me to call him Jack, the travesty, had been taking a drink of his beer when I said that. The effect was not pleasant, as the beer was very fizzy, and I know first hand that getting fizz in one's nose while laughing is not at all pleasant. After he recovered a bit, he asked me, " Aren't you a bit young to be getting married?"

"It's her or the alien," I said. Several seconds later, I realized the seriousness with which I had spoken, and the words to boot. "I didn't mean that!" I said quickly. "We're simply in love, and there are no aliens involved."

Jack looked at my father, and my father looked at Jack. Jack looked to me and then back to my father as if this was a coherent question. Dead old Dad shrugged. Eloquently. "I'm afraid I don't believe that," Jack said aloofly. "Care to explain?"

"Um…" Lie. Right. "Er, I'm harboring illegal aliens from Guatemala?"

"And can you show us these Guatemalan aliens?" my father asked uninterestedly.

"Er, no, they're, um, at work. Yes, they're at work," I said firmly.

"You're a bad liar," Jack observed calmly. "You should know that we know a great deal about aliens. We've met quite a few."

"Er, Jack," my father began.

"He knows something, Larry. Won't hurt him to know more. Tell us what aliens you're talking about."

Crap. K'ata was leaning on the bar, but I didn't want to expose her. But, I realized evilly, she wasn't the only alien I'd ever met. Feigning defeat, I said, "She isn't here any more, so I don't see what good it'll do you."

"Tell us anyway," my father said. His attention was like mine, easily attained.

"Well, okay, I guess she won't know. I'll be safe. Her name was Turi, and she beat me at fencing. She was almost human, except for the tail." Insert nervous giggle. "She only wanted to know a little about me. Favorite food, favorite color, that kind of stuff." Lies. I was testing them.

"Okay. And I suppose you won't mind telling me who that charming blur over there is?" Jack said with a grin. "Yes, I saw you," he said as she moved.

"Should I?" I asked her.

"Doesn't matter."

"Okay," I said brightly. "That's K'ata. She's been living with me for a few weeks now. Political refugee, you might say. You may as well consider what I told you about Turi's intent as nonsense; I lied. Would you please de-cloak? These are important people we're talking to," I said mockingly.

She did. Both of them jerked back in surprise, even though at least fifteen feet of room separated them from her. K'ata waved and said "hi" in a very bored voice.

"I hope you intend to leave us alone," I said. "We're not doing any harm, and-"

"He knows Baal," she said suddenly. Oh, right, the mental search. "This isn't the same Baal I remember though. He's… eviler."

Jack winced. "How do _you_ know Baal?" It was almost comical, the way he said that, like it was some sort of commercial, or a revival: "Do _you_ know the Lord?" that kind of nonsense.

"He emailed me," I said glumly. That shut them up.

"He… _emailed_ you?" Jack asked.

"Yes. Email. It's that thing you do on a computer, with the typing?" I said as thought I were explaining it to a very slow five year old.

"I know what email is," he said crossly. "I just don't know how he managed it.

"Maybe he's on Earth," Samantha said from the doorway. K'ata's presence didn't seem to bother her at all, nor did the seriousness of the atmosphere. "Dinner's ready, by the way."

We filed into the kitchen and found everything to be pretty. K'ata went up to my room and hid; I assume she didn't like my mother's cooking any more than she liked mine. I explained that to Jack, whom I was seated by, by an irate Claudia. I don't think she knew what we were talking about, and it annoyed her to no end.

We toasted my father, Jack, Mum's hospital, and the war. Oh, excuse me, the _global struggle against extremism._ (To which Jack responds, "Huh?" Apparently, he didn't know the name had been changed, ha ha.) My mother had done a fabulous job on the barbie, and I swear, when I move out, I'm commandeering her recipes CD.

While Dad blathered on about this new project he's been working on, I nudged Jack and asked him, "So, what's this about you knowing other aliens? And Baal?"

He looked around, as if expecting ninjas to leap down the stairs at any moment. (Our kitchen and dining rooms - and laundry room, too - are in the basement. Strange, yes, but Mum said the agent was desperate enough to add a discount for the inconvenience. I didn't have a say in it: I was a fetus at the time.) "Okay, you're not allowed to tell anyone, understand?"

"All of my friends know K'ata. Liz has been into space with me," I said flippantly.

"Okay, anyone besides them, and the military will make you disappear." I was tempted to tell him just what I thought of that, but he was too fast in explaining the whole Stargate program. I think my eyebrows disappeared into my hair.

"How pleasant," was all I could manage before downing my soymilk. (Yes, I drink that stuff. It is lightly vanilla flavored, and I'd like to see any cow beat that.) I think I was wishing for a valium. A big valium, the kind you give to irate elephants. I didn't speak throughout the rest of the dinner, except to correct Claudia in that I was fourteen, nearly fifteen, not twelve. Mum gave Cloudy dishes, for the way she was acting towards me. Insert smug smirk.

I fetched K'ata and told Jack to join me (us) for a little stroll (a shortened trip to her ship, the path of which I'd conveniently marked with scrunchies on trees) to discuss my career (Baal, and Jack's relationship with the bloke). Of course, I think Jack is parentheses illiterate, so this was as pointless as trying to explain Pink Floyd to my Sam, who's tastes run more to the Singers and Standards channel than to genuinely good music. Oh well. You can't save them all, Clarice.

The trip only took about ten minutes, so when we got there I explained the need for dear Jack to go into the ship and not attempt escape while K'ata scanned him. (Her idea, not mine. Gods, he probably thinks I'm mad as pantaloons. Worse, mad as a goat. Yes, I think a goat represents me quite well indeed.) Needless to say, the plasma cannon was aimed a few times before we got him to cooperate. Poor man.

I felt a bit rubbishy too, to tell you the truth. Self-doubt and -depreciation were gnawing at my yama-induced inner calm. But they were nothing to worry over compared to what awaited us in the-- Well, you might call it a foyer. A spaceship foyer. I kill myself.

A very handsome overdressed man with glowing eyes and a knowing grin was standing between two guys wearing the Commander-Tino-freaky-looking-suit thing. "Well, if this isn't the best day of my relatively long life, I don't know what--"

"Shut up," Jack said in a decidedly non-cheerful way. "_That_," he said as though he were referring to a very bad dog which frequently did naughty things to the carpet even though it was house-trained, "is Baal." He even pointed for emphasis.

Baal did a rather charming moue and said, "It is very rude to point, impudent human."

"That was the idea-- Hey, isn't your voice supposed to be… different?" Jack asked cannily.

Baal grimaced. I didn't get it. His voice was quite nice as it was, I think. "Bollocks. What gave me away?" he asked in a very mate-y, bloke-y, London voice. "By the way, I'm Cliff Simon. Baal is rather, um, drunk at the moment, so I took over."

Simon. Simon. He was familiar, somehow. Internet familiar, and if I remember something from the Internet, it's important.

Jack beat me to it. "Aren't you an actor?"

The guy was looking rather uncomfortable. "I was, but then there was this accidental thing with this lady in Australia, and, um, suffice it to say that I'm not from this universe anymore." His eyes glowed brilliantly and his voice went strange. "He means he 'accidentally' got smashed and slept with that universe's version of my wife, switched realities, became my new host, even though they looked the same, and now he's stuck with me. You're MacGyver," he said to Jack. "No amount of torturing you could make me happier than knowing that you once had a mullet, and I can get pictures of it over the Internet."

Jack ran a hand through his rather cute - Liz's words, not mine; I am not strange - silvery hair and said to me, "I think he's gone crazy. Defeat's sent him over the edge."

"Defeat!" Baal - not Cliff, oh, this is going to be terribly confusing - said with a bitter laugh. "I like to call it a well-timed reorganization of forces."

"He freed his Jaffa on one planet and said he'd pay them if they stayed with him," Jack said. "About half of them stayed, and that half decimated the others, with the help of tall, mean, and violent over there," with a nod to the two black-suited guys.

"They don't have enough personality to be mean," Cliff corrected.

"Whatever."

Three red dots of light appeared on Baal, or Cliff, or whoever he was, and K'ata growled menacingly, "Get off my ship."

"Yours, lady?" Cliff asked. "Oh, I doubt any of this is yours. Pirated it, more like. Tokra crystal technology, loot, ore, fuels, you name it, you've got it."

"Well, I didn't put it here," she said indignantly.

"And just who did?" he asked in a falsely friendly tone.

"My partner." The way she said it indicated a business-type partner, not someone you'd want as a friend.

"Oh?"

"Angus Thermopyle, if you insist." Ther-mop-uh-lee, in case you were wondering. He doesn't like the spelled pronunciation, I found out later. "The cyborg, remember?"

"You mean the violent and unhinged criminal. I'm off," Baal said as all three of them were beamed somewhere else.

There was another one of those long, pregnant silences where you wonder who's going to start chewing who out first and just where might be a good place to hide when the aforementioned begins. Well, that was what I was wondering, anyway.

"I'm leaving now," Jack said, well, it had a sarcastic flair to it but it was too blunt of a statement to be truly sarcastic. We didn't try to stop him, in any case. There wasn't really any point.

"Why is my life a soap opera?" I asked the corridor floor. I half-expected a cheeky answer, but none came. I knew the answer. It was one of those many-part answers where therapists can spend the whole day analyzing all the bits. I'm rich, I'm relatively good-looking, I'm eccentric, I'm in love, I have an alien… Maybe I can switch places with Alvin for a while. He's… Never mind, he's worse-off than me, with those rugged good looks and those dreads…

Gods, I'm depressing.

Change the subject. Right. "So, er, K'ata, you're a pirate?" And daft. Depressing and daft. And I need to trim my hair, what else is new.

She whirled violently to glare at me. "It's none of your business," she hissed.

"What do you mean, not my business? Are you my friend?"

She thought for a moment, and finally replied, "Yes, but I don't see--"

"And I'm your friend. And the role of a friend is to get all up in their friends' business. It's a human thing. Just tell me, and I'll stop annoying you, as I obviously am, and I'll go back to my boring, pathetic, little excuse of an existence." I know. Pity just works so well, though.

"No." Ouch.

"If you don't, I'll cry."

"It isn't your affair."

Ooh, cheeky girl. Alien monster, I mean. Cheeky alien-- I can't do this any more. I'm sick of all this angst and nonsense. K'ata and I returned to the house to find my father waiting out on the back deck. The same deck which my room opens out on. I hurried a bit, as I didn't trust him not to search my room for any proof of aliens that he might filch.

"Don't tell your mother or Claudia, alright?" he said.

"Don't tell them what?"

"About _them_," he said, referring to either the tiki torches or K'ata. Knowing my father, it could be both.

"Oh, like I would. Mum would have elephants."

"I've got to leave Wednesday. They'll be needing me back by them."

"Mmhmm. Fishing?"

"I was considering it, yes."

"I'll leave K'ata with Liz, and we can go tomorrow." Fishing with my father was more like _Oprah_ than anything else. "Everything but the food is ready, and I can do that in a few minutes in the morning."

"Devious planner," he said cheerfully. "Oh, what _shall_ I wear?" We both laughed at that, as it was as _me _as one could get.

"And I suppose you think you can just send me wherever you like, right?" K'ata said grumpily. "What if I want to stay in my ship with the loot, or what if I want to go see Tim?"

"Do you really want to do either of those?" I asked gently.

"Well, no, but I'd like to have a choice in things sometimes."

"Telepathy, dear." I'd been perfecting its use on her, and I could now tell what she was thinking if I tried. I couldn't do anything to anyone else except pick up faint emotions, but any psychic vampire worth the name can do that. Of course, she didn't know this.

"You've-- Well, I am surprised. Let me just go over to Liz's, them, Mr. High-and-Mighty-blue-gingham-wearer."

"You two can take the van," my dad said. Did he just offer to give me use of an actual automobile, one which I would be driving? He's lost it. Too much time away from his family has turned him into a stark raving loony.

"Okay," I said nonchalantly. Hey, I'm going to take advantage of whatever I can. "Keys?"

"You do know the basics of driving, don't you?" He looks at me with such a hopeful expression on his face that I have to lie.

"Er, yeah, Tim taught me, and you know Tim…" Lies. He had no idea who Tim was, and I intended to keep it that way. I am, after all, a proud member of TOPA: Tellers of Porkies Association.

"Er, has he ever had any wrecks?"

"No, no…" If you don't count the two last spring when he was trying to prove that he was immortal and he drove into telegraph poles. He runs into poles and gets a new van; I run into a pole with my Barbie Jeep when I'm three and people think I'm "special". (Yes, I had a Barbie Jeep. Cloudy and I traded, as she liked my blue mini-Bug and, well, you know my thing with the color pink.)

"Okay." He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and told me to go look in the garage. Funny, these weren't the van keys…

"Oh. My. Gods." I was staring at a shiny new convertible. A _red_ convertible, with a cream leather interior. This is my dream car. It even has a huge pink ribbon on the hood. I gave a girlish scream of delight, and leapt on my dad, hugging him as hard as I could. I've never told anyone about this particular dream, so that means he's either telepathic or this was pure instinct. I'll go on the second one, thanks.

"It's almost the same as my first car," he told me fondly. "I had the black interior, though, and some Mardi Gras beads strung on the rearview. From my first Spring Break. Your mother had shotgun, and Liz's parents were in the back." He chuckled at that memory. "Anyway, I hope you have as much fun as I did. Go show Liz; bet you a tener she'll go green with envy."

Next thing I knew, I was driving, and I was thinking that this was crazy. I don't even have my learner's permit. And yet… I'm driving. I'm actually driving, and I wasn't crashing into anything.

Granted, I was going about ten miles per hour. I can walk faster than that. Ten. Oi…

Oh, yay, we're there. Oh, happy day. How do I shut this thing off…?

"Omigod, Morrick!" Liz shouted from the porch. "You didn't?"

"I did, and it's officially mine." I was feeling very queasy. I kept telling myself that it's the same thing as being a passenger except you're in another seat and you're in control. Control is good. Right.

"Morrick, do you even know which one's the brake?"

"No. That's why I went so slow, dummy."

"Oh, God, we're doomed. Please tell me you're going to learn how to drive before you go on an actual road."

"Duh. I'll get Tim to teach me."

She snorted in disbelief. "Tim? Use Alvin. Alvin can avoid the poles, you know."

"Look, we'll spray paint that bridge when we get to it, so bah." I was here for a reason, but Liz has an effect on me. I always forget the important stuff when I see her.

"Oh, hi, K'ata," Liz said cheerfully.

"Hullo," she said sullenly. Oh, now I remember…

"Liz, can K'ata stay with you tomorrow? My dad's here, and we're going fishing."

"Oh, cool. Yeah, she can crash here for a while. And I've rented some movies, too."

K'ata likes television. "What movies?" See? She likes the tele…

"_Stargate_, _King Arthur_, some vampire movie with Hugh Jackman in it. You'll like 'em." Liz grinned. "Come on. _Name That Fruit_ is on."

Not bothering with the door, K'ata leapt over the side. She was doing that strange chuckling thing.

"Oh, sure, leave me without even a hug of goodbye in case I die," I said mournfully at them both. Liz laughed and hugged me, and I noticed that she was wearing the perfume I got her for her birthday. (I didn't give her _just_ that, either, in case you were thinking I'm a callous idiot. I got her some tasteful diamond earrings, too. Who doesn't love diamonds, I ask you?) K'ata gave me a pat on the head. Oh well. Not everyone loves me.

"Good luck with the getting home bit," Liz said as I started the devil car. What? It frightens me.

"I'm very glad you have a circular driveway," I said as I rolled slowly forward.

"And Morrick?" K'ata asked.

"Yes?"

"The brake's on the left."

"Ha ha. Thank you, anyway. Now I can imitate Tim."

I didn't, though. I went a very sedate twenty. Home was a very welcome sight, even if I did owe someone a tener. Claudia was on the porch, holding a new puppy. A poodle puppy. What is it with these women and poodles? Liz and Sam don't like poodles. K'ata doesn't like poodles. _I_ don't like poodles. In fact, I think they're the only ones in the county who like small, fluffy, permed devil dogs.

"I can't believe he gave you a car," Claudia said as she scratched the little beast's ears. "Can you even drive?"

"I drove to Liz's and back, didn't I, hippie?"

She gave an exasperated sigh. "I am not a hippie."

"Yes you are."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not!"

"What's the dog's name, hippie?"

She glared at me, and then said his name. "Jesus." Well, she pronounced it HAY-soos, but that's how it's spelled. My sister named a poodle Jesus. Go ahead. Laugh. I did, when I got back to my room. We've always had three poodles in the house, and one big dog outside. It's always been like that, for as long as I can remember.

I emailed Sam and told her all the good news, i.e., my dad's home, I got a car, and Cloudy named the new poodle Jesus. I received this back:

_Morrick,_

_U smegger, I cant b leve u got a car b4 I did. Ur sister's an idiot. By teh way, I wanna meet ur dad. He sounds kewl. C u day after 2morrow._

_Sammy Kool Dawg_

Memo to self, make friends learn proper Internet grammar. I can barely read that chat room nonsense.

I went downstairs for my usual late night ice cream, and I found my dad, and surprise, surprise! He's got ice cream. We stared for a moment. Alright, I had curlers in my hair, so he had a reason, even if I didn't. "Hello," I said cheerfully.

"Um, hi, madam." He was trying not to laugh, and he wasn't doing a very good job of it.

"Go ahead. You know you want to. Just remember this moment when I'm in thousands of fashion magazines as the world's best loved male model."

"Is that what you really want? To be a model?" he asked through a mouthful of Fudge Swirl.

"Not really. I'm going to go into medicine." I think, anyway. I'm going to be a doctor, and Liz is going to be a lawyer. Well, we'd planned to do that, but now K'ata wants to take us with her, so…

"That's where the money is," my dad agreed. "Of course, you could be a model if you wanted. Alvin's mother, Lauren, you've met her? She used to be a supermodel."

"Yeah, and now she owns three magazines and has her own lingerie line. I know," I said as I rummaged through the freezer for my sherbert. I love sherbert, especially the blue kind.

Lawrence tottered down the stairs. Now, you'll please remember that Lawrence is a very big dog. As in, taller than my waist, weighs more than me, and very toothy. Unfortunately, he's got the brain of a lap dog.

He looked at my hair curlers and gave a doggy snort which I interpreted as a laugh. My own dog was laughing at me. He must've been speaking to Cloudy.

"Dad, what do you really do?"

He hastily stuffed more ice cream into his mouth so he'd have time to think. "No lies, or K'ata will know when I talk to her about it."

"Find," he said, and I think he was suffering from brain-freeze. "I'm nod really a doctor-doctor, I'm a medic thingy. And I go to other planets sometimes."

"Oh." I grinned. "Classified, right?"

"Mmhmm."

"Great. I've been into space. 'T was fun."

He snorted. "'T was nauseous-making, thank you very much."

"Well, you went the normal way."

"Woof!" said Lawrence. I gave him a rib from earlier. "Woof!" he said happily.

"You're welcome, Majesty."

Dad and I chatted of aliens, space, and conspiracies until about midnight, when I dozed off in the middle of one of his speeches on how plants might be intelligent if we only… See? Nap worthy. I headed off to bed, and he, I'm sure, tried to get into Mum's room without waking her up.

My room looked empty without K'ata.

A/N: Look at him! He's roadworthy!

Dee: Thanks for the review. Cynthia appreciates your sentiment.

Veriea: Well, thank you! I'm glad you like… Keep reading, and I'll be a happy little… thing.


	12. Boredom, QVC, and Bad News

Disclaimer: I don't own… eh, you know what I don't own. If you've heard of it, I don't own it. And, if you're offended by the new puppy, well, you have no sense of humor.

* * *

11. Boredom, QVC, and Bad News

"And this is the first time we've had this on flex-pay. Three payments of thirty-eight…"

"Look at that shimmer, you don't get quality like that with anything but Diamoneque, so…"

"We're out of sizes seven and nine, but we still have five, six, eight…"

I threw the remote at the television out of sheer desperation. Kit Ray, the knife guy, was supposed to be on tonight at three, and it was only half-past ten. On Fashion Day. Women's Fashion Day.

"I'm not getting that for you," K'ata said glumly. She was just as bored as me. "How long till it--"

"Four and a half hours. Four and a half long, painful hours." My voice was dull. Six hours so far of female fashions that were, unfortunately, ugly. If Liz wore anything from the tele, I'd kill myself with a spoon.

"I'm bored."

I stared at her. Who woulda thunk it? "Well, we could watch a movie," I said cautiously. "_Legally Blonde, Cats, Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Full Monty,_" I read. I consider this a great feat, as they were at least ten feet away.

"Er, no." Well, I'm half happy she said no. I've watched all my movies to death.

"Computer?" I asked hopefully.

"Yes. There's something I need to try," she said evilly. Well, there goes the computer. Maybe I can sucker my mom into buying me a laptop.

She did pretty well for an alien, though. At least she didn't try to talk into the mouse. She did, however, discover email, and I don't think that was good. In fact, that was very, very bad. She emailed someone named Ammik about shipping weapons and such.

"Who's Ammik?" I asked.

"Friend of a friend."

I considered for a moment. "Is she cute?" I asked, as Liz and I had been fighting, and she won, and as a result I'm nearly covered in bruises and bitter.

K'ata snorted in a laughing sort of way. "Ammik is a he, and no, he isn't very attractive. Of course, considering what I think is attractive…"

I grinned. "Kou'al?"

If aliens could blush, I think she did. "He is spoken for," she stammer/growled.

"Well, of course," I said as I propped myself on a convenient pile of cushions. "But then again, lots of the people you see me and Liz fawning over are 'spoken for', as you call it. Mmm, Angelina…" What? I'm with Liz; you can tell I like aggressive women… with guns.

"Ew," K'ata said. "Even though you're way weaker than me, you frighten me."

Oh, lovely. "Thank you?" I said abashedly.

"What is this 'hyperlink' thing?" she asked as she pointed to the screen.

"Er…"

"You don't know?"

"I only do Email and Bookworm™, thank you, dear." Well, and this, but this is several years later, or previously, perspectively. "Mmph. Need carbonated flavored water. Be right back," I said, and made as if to ruffle her dreadlocks.

"Oh no you ain't," she said as she ducked.

"Mehehe," I laughed evilly. And then ran out of the room cowardlyly. (It's a word. It's just not in the dictionary. Yet.)

Everything in the kitchen was arranged in a purposefully higgledy-piggledy manner. Claudia was trying to make a point, I think. You see, she thinks we treat her like a slave, and I'll admit, I do sometimes, but Mother hardly ever sees her. She's a twenty-two year old woman with a nursing degree who lives with her mom and works at a bookshop/café dealy, for gods' sakes! She doesn't respect herself, so why should we (I)? (Which is my excuse; I just like being mean.) And so, by making messes which _I'm_ not going to pick up, and my mother has no time for, she's trying to make a stand. Yes, I agree, her plan sucks monkey butt. (A Sam-term: I'm hardly that original.)

My fizzy strawberry-lime drinks were sitting out on the counter, mocking me. They were supposed to be in the fridge, but, as I've said, Claudia is a… K'ata cackled from upstairs. Well, I was still in range, I guess, so she could still hear me. I sent her an image Austin Powers, and received a muted "Ew" in response. Remarkable, isn't it, how two individuals that are so completely different share so many of the same opinions? Oh well, the point is, I raided the freezer for ice, found an old frozen Popsicle, and dunked that in me bottle, thus creating a revolutionary new flavor: Strawberlimernge. I should copyright that, it's so good. The name, I mean. The taste itself was mildly nauseating, but I dip mozzarella sticks in pudding, so what then?

"Woof, you idiot," Lawrence said from under the table.

I peered under the table curiously. "Did you just speak to me?" I asked.

"Woof, you durr-brain. Ya, I talked. Get me a Milkbone, will ya?" Wow. My dog is almost as rude as me. I proffered the requested treats, and he then asked me, "Ya gonna get me a plate, monkey?"

"The term in _Homo sapiens sapiens_, for your canine information, and I'll get you a plate if you stop speaking to me," I said in a very uppity way. Aliens, yes, but the talking dog is just too Disney.

"Woof, but this is more easy, Homo," he said maliciously. Ouch.

"You're the one who humps everything in sight. Do you want your plate or not?" I said, now irritated.

He seemed to think for a moment. "Woof," he said finally.

"Good boy," I said sarcastically. "Don't speak to me all this week, okay?"

"Durr-brain," I thought I heard him mutter through a mouthful of doggy-bone. Due to K'ata's forcing me to perfect my mind-speech with her, Lawrence can now… do that. He isn't really talking, because his vocal chords are incapable of that, but he's coming in loud and clear in the space between my ears.

"Oh, beloved?" I called through my door. "Whatcha doing?"

"Get in here," came the grumbling reply. What, no "please"? Fine. I obeyed and found Schnucky typing away in French.

"Eh?" I prompted.

"What?" she said, but she didn't stop typing. "Oh, you. Go away for a bit. I'm hacking the French intelligence thingy."

How crass. "Why?" I asked as I toyed with the swirly straw. It was green… "You said thingy."

"Yes, I said thingy, as half of the sentences you say have the word in it. I am convinced that its meaning is other than what you think it means, however." She made the clicking sound, and ended it with a low growly-bark-sounding thingy. Thingy… Er, I think she was messing with me. Yes, she's just trying to make me paranoid… thingy.

"You are evil," I said with my eyes narrowed.

"Your sister's new dog--"

"Jesus," I put in helpfully. What, it's his name! My sister is stupid.

"Is eviler than me," she finished. "He was chewing on a table leg earlier."

"Ah, yes, nothing like walking into a room and seeing Jesus scooting his butt across the carpet," I said with diabolical relish.

She gave me an odd look and then returned her gaze to the monitor. There were two boxes on the screen, one with blue typing, one with red. The blue type was slightly ahead of K'ata, and seemingly independent of her. Somehow, this isn't how I pictured how hacking a network would be. There was more fire in my idea, and Hot Pockets, and Xena tapes galore.

"Hey, if you were just gonna tell me to go away, why'd you tell me to come in me room?" I asked as I fished around in my bottle for the Popsicle stick.

"I didn't say anything," she said with a twitchy shrug. "I'm too disdainful to reply to everything you say."

"Oi, great confidence booster, that," I drawled. "I distinctly heard your voice, though." Well, maybe not _distinctly_, per se, but the voice was female, and it's only me, K'ata, and Lawrence, so the math is pretty--

A loud "Halloo?" sounded from the kitchen. It sounded a lot like Turi's ingratiating-but-secretly-condescending voice.

K'ata said something that very nearly burned my ears and shut the Internet off. Then, she unsheathed the wrist blades (which I hadn't even noticed until now) and, before shutting the door, told me that if I valued my life, I'd stay in my room.

I followed her.

Dumb, I know, but I'm very curious. And pretty. Curious and pretty. Hmm…

"…stands to reason that since you have your field up, messages can't get through, _Yurmi_. That means they must be delivered in person," Turi said as though she was speaking to a toddler.

"Too-Ree," I said as I snuck up behind her. (K'ata had backed her to the doorway to the stairs. Apparently, she planned to unleash the malign little xenomorph-mutated chick on me. How kind.) I barely avoided her tail as she spun to face me.

"Mr. Evans," she said stiffly. "You're still alive?"

"Yep!" I chuckled. "K'ata has more reason to fear my socks than I have to fear her."

"Well, you never wash them. Kindly leave, Commander Shepherd. And should I see you again under different circumstances, I will make you pay in blood for the slur to my honor." And with that, she gestured to the door.

Turi looked from me to K'ata and back to me. Deciding that it was a lost cause, she turned to leave. At the threshold, however, she glanced back at me and said, "Nice car, Morrick." That said, she disappeared.

"Well, that was weird," I grumped and returned to my room. K'ata followed me.

"I thought I told you to stay here," she said softly. She was messing with her wrist computer, not looking at me.

"And I thought I told you that that kind of language is for the ignorant," was my retort. "What did she call you?"

She translated it. It was not pleasant.

"Oh," I said slowly. "That's, um… Yeah."

"It's wrong, is what it is. Flip that switch, will you?" she said and nodded to the field generator.

"Which one?" I asked blankly. There were dozens.

"Third row, fifth to the right."

"What's it gonna do?" I asked suspiciously. I flipped a switch for her day before yesterday, and it nearly electrocuted me.

"It'll enable this thingy to work," she growled and waved a chip (the non-edible computer-type) at me. Well, she should have said so. I flipped the indicated switch, and there was a very slight, tingly feeling to the air.

"Ooh," I said. "This is nice…"

"Don't get used to it. Null waves are highly addictive." Her computer beeped, and she began speaking a great lot of chattery nonsense. "Oh, no…" was the impression I got from her. A very "oh, crap, we're doomed" vibe.

"What's it say?" I said as she hissed insults at her mini-screen.

"Pack your things," she growled. "We're leaving in three days."

"Huh?" I said and fell to the floor.

* * *

I guess I fainted. K'ata was explaining that bounty hunters were being considered for her recapture, and Turi and Kou'al were the best in the galaxy. It would only be a matter of time before they were found and their services were requisitioned. She would be hunted, sedated, and taken back to her Council of Elders, who would decide her fate, which would be unpleasant no matter what they chose, as she would never be free again.

Her eyes glowed with their bright lavender splendor as she explained this. "So Turi was doing us a favor?" I asked. My voice was strained, and the absence of the null waves was extremely annoying. But hey, addictive, my feathery rear. (I hadn't believed her.)

"I suppose," K'ata sighed. "They're leaving with us. Call Liz and Alvin, and tell those other two."

"What?" I said incredulously.

"You heard," she said irritatedly. "You, Liz, and Alvin are coming with me. I'll need a crew for deep space, and Angus isn't very reliable." With a rueful grin on her face, she added, "Hope to all the gods you call on that you're not gap-sick."

I blinked owlishly for a moment. "Riiight. I'll _do_ that. Yes, er, oh, look, it's time for Kit Ray!"

"Nope," she said. I noticed that rather than the big knife she usually wore at her thigh, she had a remote-holster, with--

"Give me my remote!" I yelled at her.

She slapped me, very hard, and threw the remote out the open door into the pool. "Pack your things," she ordered. "I will not tell you again, and you know the penalty for--"

"Yada yada, shut up, why don't you?" I said as I rubbed my stinging cheek. "Did you ever think that you might be nice to me for once?"

"I have been being nice: I haven't killed you yet. What more do you want?" she asked as if this were perfectly rational to her.

"I'm not going with you," I said coldly. Stupid aliens with illusions of grandeur. Stupid Dad working with stupid aliens. Stupid friends taking to stupid aliens… "I'm not going with you," I repeated.

"Yes, you are," she said with a little laugh. "I'm not as stupid as you're thinking. If you don't cooperate with my plans, I will kill every living thing in this house, and I will do the same to all of your friends' homes, and I will kill you last of all." She laughed happily. "Your friends are your weaknesses, Morrick."

I was cold. Looking back on it now, I realize how stupid of me that was. K'ata was, and still is, a child. A petulant, argumentative, and sometimes domineering child, yes, but she can be overpowered. Fortunately, I didn't know then what I know now.

I called her something that I had thought would never pass my lips, never be uttered by one so politically correct as me. Much akin to _Yurmi_, and yet so very Earthlike.

"Morrick, dear, I will sedate you if I must," she said softly.

"That's your answer to everything, isn't it?" I cried hysterically. "Morrick wants to exercise his free will, oh, let's pump him full of drugs!" I think I may have been crying. My face, along with every other part of me, had gone numb, so I couldn't tell.

"It works," she said with a shrug. "If you don't come with me, the bounty hunters will abduct you along with everyone else who's seen me. And believe me, these are not nice people. If you think I've been cruel to you, you must believe me when I say would die before the first day was over."

"Liar," I muttered. "You have a really messed up sense of humor, you know."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, for one thing, you go around like you're the queen of the universe or something when we all know that you're-- not." I was going to say _nothing_, but that would be more towards her level, wouldn't it? "And then, you try to order me around like I'm some sort of slave, and you think when I do what you say, it's because of your order, but it isn't. It's just to shut you up."

"Morrick, I know this."

"Huh?"

"I know all this. Telepathy, remember? And you can tell, too, that I'm telling the truth when I say that you must come with me or die."

"I'll take the death, then," I said unenthusiastically. "They'll probably never find me anyway."

"They will."

"Will not."

"Will too."

"Will not."

"Will too. Look, this is silly."

"Is not."

"Is t-- Listen, I don't want you dead, alright?" She was growling, and not the nice, companionable growl that I was used to. This growl made my hair stand on end. "I need a crew, you need to get off this planet before the hunters come. Well, we both need that, but--"

"I don't know anything about space ships," I said dully. Already, I guessed that I wasn't about to win this time.

"I'll teach you," she said with a grin.

"And Liz and Alvin?" I asked. "Because Liz doesn't like to learn unless it involves fashion. Same with Alvin, only it's classical music."

"I'll teach them, too," she said. "So you're agreeing?"

"Ah, I haven't said that yet," I said morosely.

"But you were thinking it," she laughed.

"Maybe."

"Good. I'll tell Angus."

Uh-huh. Right. You do that. I was suddenly very drowsy, and Kit Ray hadn't come on yet. But that didn't matter much anymore.

"What am I going to tell my parents?" I asked.

"Well, you're likely to see your father again. Believe me, they won't miss you."

"You're so kind. And how much of my stuff can I take with me?"

She thought for a moment. "All of it. Your room on the ship will be way bigger than this, so we'll need to get _more_ stuff, and…"

"Space malls, hmm… I can't wait to see your version of an IKEA." I surveyed the mess before me. "How are we gonna get the trampoline out the door?"

She blinked. "Okay. I'll think of something."

"The door is too small," I said unhelpfully.

"Unless you want me to rip off that there wall, shush. I think I have something for this though. Matter stability somethinanother." She paused, reflecting. "Worked on a hull, ought to work on this flimsy little wall."

The flimsy little wall consisted of two layers of brick with a foot of concrete between them, plus golf ball resistant siding and super-happy-funtime pink and black wallpaper. Just so you know.

I yawned. "Yes, you keep thinking, and I'll sleep for a while." My trampoline-bed was beckoning.

"Call your friends first," she said in a very matronly fashion.

"They'll think I've been doing whippets," I said dejectedly. Didn't phase her, however, as I don't think she knows what whippets are. (You know, where you breathe from the Reddiwhip can? Never got the point of that, I don't think.) "Fine. Get me the phone."

She looked as if she was about to tell me to get it myself, but then she just shook her head and clicked, annoyed. She tossed me my cell phone, which just happened to be blue with pink polka dots.

"Ah, many thanks, sirrah. My directory?" When she threw that, it hit my head. Good aim, yes, but did she really need to throw it so hard? I dialed Liz's number first.

"Hello?" came the usual elderly voice. Rocks On Porch On Tuesdays, if I wasn't mistaken.

"Hey, doll, it's Morrick. Is my beloved there?" I have to do this every time I call, or they thing it's an imposter, trying to steal away the family jewel.

"Oh, hang on sweetie, I'll get her," Tuesdays said. She called Liz's name and did a slightly mad cackle and screech routine. "She's coming, dear."

"Thank you," I said. I would miss the crazy aunts and grannies.

"What?" came Liz's grouchy reply.

"Darling, how would you feel about a, er, cruise?"

"You may as well just tell me, because I'm not in a patient mood."

"K'ata has to leave and she's taking you and me and Alvin with her and if we don't come with her the bounty hunters will come and they'll kill us and we'll be dead and we'll never get married and we'll never move to England and we'll never have ponies and kids and if we don't then we'll never be happy in our afterlife and if we're not happy then we'll be ghosts and they'll take us to space before they kill us and we'll be space ghosts and we'll never find home and we'll be dead space hobos."

"Is that all?" she asked.

"We have to leave, Liz. You have to pack everything, everything, and we have to leave in three days."

I could tell she was rolling her eyes. "Okay, Morrick. I'll pack. 'Bye." She hung up.

"I told you," I said to K'ata. She ignored me. I called Alvin next.

"Hey, jolly hearing from you this late. What's up?" he said cheerfully.

I tried to adapt what I said to Liz to this. I don't think it worked.

"So wait, wait. You're saying that you want to move to England and have ponies with me and Liz? Morrick, I think I know what medication you need to be on."

"No! Look, just pack your stuff, and we'll be over later tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," he said slowly. "You're going to have to explain the pony thing to me again, though." I hung up this time.

Sam and Tim live together because Sam's mother and Tim's father are in lurrve, even though Tim's dad is in France, and Sam's mum is somewhere in Ohio. (They have two live in sitters (au pairs, technically) , formally known as Gretchen and Ingrid. They frighten me.) Anyhow, this makes things much easier for me.

"Hello?" came the very east German voice of Gretchen.

"Yes, this is Morrick. May I please speak to Tim or Sam?"

"Eet ees veery late," she said menacingly.

I winced. "Yes, ma'am, but it's also very important. A matter of life and death."

"Oho, reealy?" she inquired archly. "Whose?"

"Everyone's. Look, I really need to talk to them," I said shortly.

"Veery weell," she said. "Timothy! Samantha! Geet down heere eet once!"

"Will you shut up?" I heard Ingrid say from a few feet away. "_Big Brother_ is on."

Tim and Sam seemed to be tumbling down their stairs, and there seemed to be a rather lot of stairs, too. "Hey," came Tim's breathless voice finally. "What's going on? You know they don't normally let us have calls after eleven."

"Me, K'ata, Liz, and Alvin are leaving in about three days," I said sadly. "Come over tomorrow; I need help packing my stuff, and Tim, you'll get to walk through a wall."

"Okay, cool. When are you coming back?" Oh, crap, he thinks it's a vacation. Okay.

"I ain't. We ain't. This is serious, Tim."

Silence. Then Sam took over. "We'll miss you, Morrick." I heard the tears in her voice. "Send us a postcard, okay?"

"Will do," was my soft reply. "'Bye."

* * *

A/N: This is the next to last chapter. There'll be a sequel, or more like the Volume Two bit of Kill Bill, thought it won't be like that. Anyway, I'm going to be doing something with Sam next.

Mousewolf: Thank you for your cryptic review. I don't get it, but it's funny.

Zappy: Woof woof to you too. ;)


	13. It's Over Now Kinda

Disclaimer: If you've heard of it, I don't own it.

Also, if you're offended by anything, too bloody bad. Heh, just kidding.

* * *

13. It's Over Now… Kinda 

The setting sun shone into my nearly bare room, streaking the walls with ocher and red blood, with shadows gibbering and writhing across the ceiling. I sat on my stripped trampoline, looking at nothing in particular, wondering if "it" was worth it.

"It" was, in this case, completing the process of gutting my room by yanking the trampoline through the destabilized wall and into the cargo hold of a space ship. "It" meant never seeing my parents again, for I knew that when K'ata had said that I'd see my dad, she had been lying. "It" meant deserting my home planet and crewing for a bloody alien.

But, suggests my more logical self, aren't we all aliens when we're in space? And I agree with this, of course, as logic is one of my strengths. And because it's helping me keep my sanity.

K'ata walked through the wall and looked at me. She didn't say anything, she just stared. After about two minutes, it got annoying.

"What?" I snapped. "I'm grieving, in case you haven't noticed."

"You have no reason to grieve," she said softly. "You should be happy!"

"About what?" I asked. "Being abducted?" I gave a hollow bark of laughter and returned to staring at the familiar wallpaper. No more Fair of Ages, no more Moose Club… "You don't understand, K'ata, that I'm not a robot, like you. I actually have emotions."

She stepped toward me, and for the slightest of moments I thought she was going to snap my neck. She didn't. Instead, she picked me up by my throat and tossed me against a handy-dandy wall. My vision went spotty, but through the spots I could see that she was trembling. Anger or sorrow, I knew not which. Didn't care, either.

"Oh, gayness," I muttered. "You really love me, don't you?"

"No," she said shortly. Her computer beeped, and my cell phone beeped, and sparks flew out of the outlets… This had been happening every hour, on the hour, since three today. I reached under my bed and dragged out a pair of well-worn Etnies with monkey laces, checked them for small furry mammals, and donned them.

"Wall-walk?" I asked cheerfully. (You see, I'm not going to tell you that I've borrowed a large supply of Liz's Prozac for Kids and have been eating them like M&Ms. That might tarnish your opinion of me.)

She growled and walked back through, leaving me to deal with the tramp. (And I'm not referring to Alvin, who happens to be in the kitchen making sandwiches.) With a bored grumble, I rolled the thing through the wall and into the cargo hold. (Going through the wall felt like walking through pudding. Old pudding.) K'ata stood in one corner with a technicologically advancedersomething clipboard, jotting down an inventory of all of my junk. (Intergalactic yard-sales dance in my head…)

I blinked. Stupid color contacts. I have perfect vision, but I wear the things anyway. Who wouldn't want these such vampire eyes as I have, I ask you? (And I do quote Liz: "Hey, you look stupid.") Except for that they're killing my _eyes_, I mutter to myself. Something pink and black catches my watering gaze, and I see an Alvin-board. (A skateboard that happens to belong to Alvin. Nothing different about it except for the pink feathers that grace the edges.) "What's Alvin's junk doing with my junk?" I asked surreptitiously.

She shrugged and made a face at me. Typical. Honestly, sometimes I feel as though I'm dealing with a bunch of first graders.

"Would you know my name, if I saw you in Heaven?" I hummed softly. "Would it be the same, if I saw you in Heaven? I must be strong, and carry on…" Eric Clapton. He's somewhat of a hero for me.

That was it. Everything was packed into the hold, all the big stuff secured, all the small junk piled and then secured with some bubble-wrap-y stuff. With my hands on my hips, I surveyed my worldly possessions.

And came to the conclusion that I have too much crap.

Blasphemy, I know. Any Beau worth his buttons will tell you that there is no such thing as "too much crap", but due to my current state of repressed one-eighths crisis, I'm reconsidering. (At least, I hope this isn't my _mid_life crisis, I think as I nibble another Prozac.)

"Done yet?" K'ata quipped as I flopped down into the copilot's seat of the ship. It was surprisingly comfy.

"Yep," I said. "All we have left now is Liz. Did you get Lawrence?"

"Look behind you," she said as she powered up the ship. I'd learned so far that not only did this thing not have cup holders, it took about ten minutes to boot up all of its computers. Supposedly, it was a "vintage model, and it was cheap". How nice.

But. I looked behind me and found Lawrence's rather large doggy bottom planted in a chair in an obvious imitation of me. I didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me either laugh or cringe.

"What's up, Cat-Person?" he asked me. (That's about the most disgusting insult in the books for a dog, may I remind you.)

"Oh, nothing much, He-Who-Is-Humped-By-Pomeranians. We're just taking a direct route to Korea to sell you on the black market."

"Yeah, and why are we going to Korea? All the good hookers must be liberated by now."

With a manic glint in my eye, I said, "They eat dog, in Korea."

Lawrence shut up. Yay.

And then I realized that I was bantering with a dog. No, I wasn't at the people level anymore, I had sunk even lower than the pillow level. Oh, agony…

"You know, with the right receiving equipment, you can access the space chatting programs," K'ata said neutrally. That sounded rehearsed, as did what followed. "You need to be careful though, because if you think that there are perverts here on your little trailer-park of a planet, you won't even be able to get your little mind around the space sickos."

Impossible. The alien is giving me the "Perv Talk", an my dear mother termed it. Kinda funny, seeing as she's just a kid herself.

"Mmhmm… It's time to go, now, I think," she muttered. I turned to look at her, and lo and behold, what did I see on screen but my mother's own Bronco, rolling down the drive.

"Are we cloaked?" I asked, panicked. I am so not in the mood for a mother-guilt-trip right now.

No such luck. "No, this ship does not have a cloaking mechanism," K'ata growled. Softening to my plight, she said, "She will see your letter, Morrick, and she will understand."

Oh, er, yes. My letter. Right, er…

My letter was a pack of lies, of course. I couldn't tell her the truth, that I was being abducted almost against my will, please save me, Mum! She'd get herself killed.

So, I twisted the truth. I said that it was a matter of the utmost importance, a I'm-going-to-save-Earth kind of thing.

Ha. More likely, I'll end up dead after a year, but other people do this (live in space) so why can't I?

I'm a rich, snobby emo kid, that's why.

Whoa, that's cool. One minute, there's Momsy barreling down the drive (we have a very long driveway) and the next, it's "Oh, look at those clouds below us!" land.

"Er, Liz?" I asked K'ata.

"Already dealt with," she said with an evil grin. "Commander Tino agreed to do it."

That… that… Italian! I should have known better than to give him this opportunity! All they do is drink wine, take naps, make love, drive sports cars very fast with no using of brakes, and then wake up in the morning looking fabulous.

Hmm… I might be Italian, then.

Tino and I might be related! We can open up the space-version of Olive Garden together, and they'll come in droves to see us…

Nah. I'm too handsome to be related to anyone but Madonna, Prince, or Billy Joe. Wait, change that, I'm only related to any of the Green Day guys, no one else.

Ew. Aaron Carter moment. We can keep that our little secret, I think. I've seen the _Godfather_ movies… I know things…

I was in space, now. K'ata had gone from flat-screen to a astrological hologram. It was pretty, and everything was color coded.

Oh, and did I mention the two armadas? Oh, yes, ours was extremely close, and theirs (the bounty hunters, I assume blithely) was far, far away.

"Secure yourself, Morrick. We're about to hit some turbulence," K'ata said as the floor came up to kick me in the chest. Or maybe I went down… I'm not sure. It was a very hard impact.

"Ouch," I growled. "That hurt, you know. You're a bad driver."

"Says the boy who goes only ten kilometers an hour," she laughed. For some inexplicable reason, she chose to use the metric system. It was almost funny. Almost.

"Yes, well, at least he stays on the bloody road," Alvin said as he lurched into the cabin. "Got anything for airsickness on this tub?"

"Yes," the computer said. "Roll down a window."

Perhaps I should explain that our computer is exactly the opposite of Eddie, the _Heart of Gold_ computer. Ours seems to have a death wish, and he wants to take all of us with him.

"Shut up, Walker." K'ata gave the console a fond whack and switched on the autopilot. "I suppose it's time for the tour, even though you'll be living on _Dark Glory_ most of the time. Sick bay first," she said as she looked at Alvin's now green complexion.

Sick bay turned out to be a giant room with more of the laser-scanning madness chairs, the bed equivalent, and many, many piles of old magazines. There was an androgynous hologram, two androgynous robots, and a windup monkey, and all of them seemed thrilled to have a patient.

"I haven't bother to give them personalities yet, K'ata said, referring to the androgynous ones. "Maybe I'll use that as a programming assignment."

"I call the hologram," I said cheerfully, thinking of an old show called _Red Dwarf_. There was this obsessive compulsive militant hologram named Mr. Rimmer, and perhaps with a few fine-tunings and adjustments, I'd have a pub-mate. "Oh, are there pubs in space?"

"More than you'd like to know, and good, you called the most difficult thing. I admire your bravery," she said sarcastically.

"Ha bloody ha," Alvin said as his dreads were examined by the windup monkey. Poor thing, all it had were those cymbals for hands…

And at this point, I forgot exactly what happened. Never you mind, though, we're on the big ship, and Liz has found the Space Shopping Network. Although, why she is eyeing that leather thingy, I don't want to know.

So… Big, grotty ship, needs vacuuming. I'd probably get stuck with that job. Space-Maid.

Kou'al's voice came over the intercom saying, "Attention: we have some new people aboard, so I want everyone to play nice. The immaturity of a few unnamed Ensigns astounds me. Oh, and the Leira system is going to be a bit wonky for the next few minutes, so don't be alarmed if the holograms start with their interpretation of _Moulin Rouge._ Again, the immaturity…" He faded into silence and the intercom beeped off.

A drag queen danced by singing _It's Raining Men_, and four penguins did aerobics in the background.

A tap on the shoulder startled me out of my reverie. I turned to find a rather cute chubby brunette girl holding some strange bracelets and cards. She smiled shyly and said, "Hi. Are you Mr. Evans?"

"Depends on who's asking," I said caddishly.

She stood to attention and gave me an odd salute, index and middle finger touching her hairline. "Ensign Rachel Houston, of the_ Sterling_, reporting as requested by Captain Kou'al. And you are, of course…?"

"Morrick Evans. Nice to meet you." Scary girl. Yikes, she couldn't have been any older than me, and yet she carried herself with a militant dignity that I could never match.

"Good. I have been assigned as your guide and guard. I will answer your questions and take you wherever you want to go, within reason. Certain areas are classified," she said apologetically. "In an emergency, you must do whatever I say, and should I become incapacitated, you are to report to a decided location, of our mutual choosing."

"Lady, you sound like a lawyer. Could we just get on with the tour?" If there's a jetlag for space, I had it.

She grinned and nodded. Her hair was short and framed her face like a halo, and it bounced vivaciously. She had a nice smile too, no makeup needed, unless the pinkness of her lips was one of those dyes. Her ship suit looked like some sort of denim and was of a very flattering cut…

Must… resist… cheating… Liz will kill me before this is over. I know it.

Maybe I should turn to Islam… The whole multiple wives thing. That has to apply to girlfriends as well, right?

"If you'll follow me?" She turned and led me to a lift. "And by the way, you might want to turn on your telepathy. I'm sure the deaf man of the fifteenth floor would like to hear your thoughts on me again." Her voice was calm, but I still wondered if she'd turn suddenly knock me out.

My face had gone red and I was stumbling a little. Alright, I'm great with women. Just not the ones I like.

So, I muttered things that I'd heard on _Blackadder Goes Forth_. Lovely show.

"So, now that you've stopped mentally groping me, this ship has ninety-three floors, nine hundred seventy-two rooms per floor, not including cargo bays, holds, the outer extensions, or the inner workings."

"…lost dearer friends when I was last deloused," I said through clenched teeth.

"Excuse me?" she asked, perturbed.

I smiled. "Never you worry your pretty little head over it, Darling."

She slapped me. Hard. It hurt.

"…beautiful, delicious, plump-breasted pigeon!" I shouted fitfully.

At that point, the door whooshed open to reveal Commander Tino locked in a passionate embrace with…

With…

I couldn't really tell, as his hair was veiling pretty much everything. Ah, there we are!

With Wraith Liz.

Huh?

It was Liz, but she was all, like, older and whiter, and she had gills and claws and lots more teeth than I remembered.

I looked over at Ensign Rachel.

She sighed sadly. "Let me guess. Retaliation by showing her how you've moved on so very quickly?"

"Yeees…" I said slowly.

She looked wistful. "If only you weren't the fourth guy to ask me that today. What?" she asked at my openmouthed incredulousness. "It's what happens when you load a ship with lots and lots of rowdy teenagers with a few adults with _problems_," she yelled that at Commander Tino, "thrown in to keep us from killing each other. And fine, I'll do it, but if you _dare_ touch me anywhere I haven't specified, I'll break all of your fingers and castrate you, understand?"

I stepped back to the far wall. "Uh, no thanks, then." You frighten me, I added silently.

"Oh, do I?" She seemed pleased. "Anna will be pleased."

"Anna?" I asked.

"My psych lady," she said cheerfully. Of course. I'd get the nutter.

Speaking of, I think Liz's need for air has officially ceased. Wow, look at 'em go. Rachel and I watched this display for about ten minutes before she finally mentioned getting acquainted with the ship.

"And guess what?" she said. "We have two plans of action. One, we break the Lovers up, and Two, we go to deck H-Four, sneak into the ventilation system, crawl to deck M-Two, get out (and this is if none of the other ensigns notice a block in the system and incinerate us), find sub-hatchway M-Two-Fourteen, which I think is behind the pile of wedding toasters, not too sure, but crawl into that, and navigate our way to the Central Personnel Unit without computers (because the hatches are constantly magnetized in case our internal gravity malfunctions, and the magnetization will wonky the computers), and then we have to register you." She breathed a peppermint-scented sigh. "I don't know, I rather fancy Two, don't you?"

I looked at her. "Or, we could sneak around them," I said with all the innocence I could muster.

She went all huffy with irritation and said, "Well, if you _want_ to _avoid_ confrontation."

I snorted. "Indeed I do. You're crazy, do you know that? Crawling through vents that can vaporize--"

"Incinerate," she corrected.

"Fine. Incinerate, yourself. You don't need rank. You need therapy!"

"You will make a very bad pirate, you know that?" she asked me politely.

"Pirate?" I asked blankly. "What pirate? Where?"

"Me, you, everyone in the armada. Officially, we're explorers, but if anyone got ahold of Kou'al's books, we'd be finished." She grinned ruefully. "I'd be sent back to my own planet." She shuddered. "You'd be executed, of course."

"Uh, why?"

"You have no value, yet. You've done nothing," she said with a flippant wave of her hand. "Worthless."

"But your crimes-- Never mind, I don't care. Just shut up so they don't see us." I was by this time very peeved indeed. Liz was pretty much gone now, no Sam to take me to Sonic and buy me get-happy-now-or-else-I-shall-beat-you milkshakes, and this psycho girl was taunting me with, well, her entire being.

Yep. I need Prozac. I feel like a depressed Persian trucker.

"Get down!" Rachel whispered to me. "They've stopped."

"Have they now?" I said sarcastically. "Pass me the sugar. It's in the rat poison bottle."

"Hmph. Aren't you going to confront her?" she asked.

"At the risk of getting kicked so hard I'll have toes for teeth?" I muttered. "I think not. Let her snog her little Italian man-bimbo. I'll just get a harem."

"Men!" she chuckled. "That's all you ever think about."

"Not true," I said. "_British Vogue_ and _Teen Vogue_ often dance in my head."

"Did you think I was calling you a man?" she said scathingly. "Such publications are inconsequential superficialities and they are a degradation to all that is legitimately gained."

"You're pretty enough to be in one," I said smarmily. Her eyes went wide and her pretty mouth hung open.

"You-- you really think so?" she asked softly. "I mean, my hair doesn't--"

"Your hair is lovely," I said happily. Flattery is the best defense against an angry Li-- woman. Angry woman.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Chauvinistic pig!" she yelled at me. "How dare you use flattery against me!" She stepped forward menacingly and I fled.

Right into the arms of Kou'al. Ouch. I'd hit him at a very high speed, and because of all of that pointy armor he was wearing, I got winded.

"Sorry, sir," I wheezed.

"Let me guess. You were fleeing from some form of angry female." When I nodded, he said, "Oh, nothing to worry over. I do it at least three times a week." He winked and conspiratorially said, "Turi and Liz are of the same mold. Both Georgia-girls. Both crazy. Both… umm…"

"It's okay, sir," I said as he pulled me off of the floor and back onto my feet. "I can do a lot better than the two of them."

"Two? You idiot. Never confess bigamy, not even to your friends, and definitely not to me… I'm a talkative drunk." He looked concerned, though. "Who else?"

"That Ensign. If she doesn't want me to think naughty things about her, she needs to button her blouse." I frowned as I remembered the pigeon comment. "And I need to learn not to say the first thing that comes into my head."

"Right. Rachel. You'll need… A Bazooka!" he laughed triumphantly. "To the weapons!"

"Eh, why do I need weapons?" I asked.

"She'll use weapons. Therefore, you need weapons to protect yourself. Unless you _want_ to be a hamburger Tuesday?"

_This whole ship is full of lunatics. The lunatic is in the hall, the lunatic is in the hall…_ I thought sadly. Annoying singsong mind-voice.

"Well, I did learn just about all I know of Earth-culture from cartoons," he said. "Oh, look, a wizard!" He was pointing at Alvin.

And Alvin was dressed in all black drag with a pointy hat. "Shut up," he said. "You're just jealous because I look better in a kilt than you."

"Shut up, yourself. Morrick, get used to strange things, because 'normal' doesn't exist here." Kou'al then dragged Alvin off to the cafeteria for cake.

* * *

So, here I sit, writing my memoirs for the last few weeks… It's so very important to remember things, Kou'al told me, and he said that memoirs were a good way to. Eventually, all of my story will be told, but for now… I have to deal with space piracy and mad aliens.

This morning, Turi gave me a hat that said ALIEN. I suppose it's ironic, now, but I guess I am one.

June 2, 2004, or 22 :64:23:065 (Space time is confusing.)

* * *

A/N: It's over. Done with. I need a break. 

In other words, I'm going to do another story.

A sequel has already been planned for this, and hopefully Morrick will have stopped being such an emo. Emo kid. Blech.


End file.
